Alice's Adventures Underground review: Choose your own adventure in Wonderland

"I'm not sure I want to touch anything," one guest says quietly during the opening minutes of Alice's Adventures Underground. We are all packed in a tiny study surrounded by books, photographs, ornaments, trinkets and all manner of things precious to someone at some point in their lives.

The Vaults - a rabbit warren underneath Waterloo station in central London - has no fourth wall, though. Playing along is a crucial part of this theatre experience, so brace yourself.

Your journey through this interpretation of Wonderland stems from one important choice you make at the start of the performance - 'eat me' or 'drink me', harking back to Alice's first moments down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll's novel. Much of what you see, hear and feel over the course of 90 minutes will depend on that decision.

My friend and I made the same choice at this point - but you can still be separated later on in the production, leading to some subtle differences in the rooms we were taken to and the performances, sketches and art we saw.

Had we gone our separate ways at the first opportunity, perhaps we would have had even more varied tales to tell based on the experiences shared by other guests.

That said, the experience is closer to promenade theatre than fully immersive. There are a number of interactive elements, but these are minimal and theatre-goers won't be asked to do anything too frightening. The large ensemble cast embrace their roles with relish, with plenty of throwaway one-liners leading you to suspect that no performance is truly the same.

Marshalling such a large number of people through the installation and keeping to time is a huge challenge, and requires logic, order and organisational skill that would make the Queen of Hearts burst with pride. However, at times, you feel rushed through the experience.

While you could argue that a hurried approach to proceedings is very much in tune with the time-pressed White Rabbit, it's a shame that there's very little time to dwell on the first-class production details - from the rabbit-shaped air vents in one of the rooms to roses made from pages of the original text. Video, installations, music, puppetry, stand-up and physical theatre combine with ease, with no one element dominating storytelling too much.

The performance highlight is a pacy Tea Party scene which sees the entire audience reunited, and the four performers make good use of the large space, trampling along a long table bookended by a beautiful clock and a giant, steaming teapot.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been reinterpreted so many times over the past 150 years, from Disney's much-loved 1951 technicolour animation to Jan Švankmajer's brilliant but unsettling surrealist interpretation of the tale.

This interpretation from Les Enfants Terribles and Emma Brünjes Productions sits somewhere in between the two. It is no twisted surrealist masterpiece, that's for sure - but it's not all saccharine sweetness and light, either. Themes of espionage, totalitarianism and identity are brought front and centre. Some will love this twist on the tale, others will feel it brings it too far into the 'real' world - well, as real as Wonderland gets.

All in all, Alice's Adventures Underground is an affectionate, exhilarating salute to the original text - and like the book, this production makes an effort to embrace the fact that much depends on your own interpretation of it.

Kate Goodacre

Kate (they/she) is a freelance writer, editor, digital editorial trainer and data technician who first joined Digital Spy as an overnight freelance sub-editor in January 2011, after studying a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Salford University while working part-time as a social researcher.
In July 2013, Kate joined the DS staff team as chief sub-editor and following six years as the site's managing editor, their role expanded to incorporate Hearst UK's entertainment portfolio (including Digital Spy and its sibling titles Best and Inside Soap) between late 2024 and early 2026.
  Kate has worked as a writer and editor since 2006, with bylines syndicated across the Hearst network and at organisations including Metro. They started their career as a TV production runner for the BBC and contributed to various music websites, blogs and zines while based in Manchester.
  During her time at DS, Kate has previously been a freelance sub-editor and chief sub-editor.
  Kate's team at Digital Spy were proudly nominated in the Best Subbing/Production Team category at the BSME Talent Awards 2022. Over the years, she has contributed to coverage of many, many Prime Days and Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and was part of the team that launched the DS weekly TV newsletter in November 2019 – followed by the Top of the Shops e-commerce newsletter in May 2024.
   Kate's screen passions include Taskmaster (their biggest career regret remains turning down the opportunity to visit the house), nature documentaries, and live sport (up there with the greatest of all soap operas although if asked to choose, it's Corrie… every time).
   Her highlights while working at DS have included interviewing Stevie Nicks on the red carpet for her documentary In Your Dreams, sitting at a press roundtable with Formula 1 commentary icon Murray Walker, watching a life-sized LEGO car being driven around Silverstone, writing an album-by-album retrospective of Lady Gaga's genre-defying career for Living Legends, and raising awareness of receiving and understanding a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis through the lens of Bianca and Freddie's EastEnders storyline.
 Upon remembering to log off the internet, Kate enjoys live theatre, dance and comedy, appreciating nature, baking (badly), tending a recently-rented allotment (equally badly) and pampering one very spoiled rescue cat named Jolene.
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