Wonderland

Description

The musical Wonderland , which opened on Broadway on April 17, 2011, is the umpteenth screen or stage adaptation of Lewis Carrolls childrens books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, not that Carrolls name appears anywhere in the credits; when your work goes out of copyright and people dont have to pay you anymore, they tend to forget you ever did it. But the original author probably wouldnt have minded not being associated with this updating, in which his fantasy world has been located beneath the sub-basement of an apartment building in present-day Queens, New York, and Alice is a single mother. The dominant presence in the show, and even more on the cast album, is composer Frank Wildhorn. Wildhorn has gone on record wanting to create theater music that would rule the pop charts as it did in the middle of the 20th century, but he has always been a follower rather than a leader, and in his music for Wonderland, he often seems to be re-creating the pop singles chart of about 1999, as if this show has been sitting in a drawer for over a decade. For example, the big rhythm number early on is Go with the Flow, which is a straight knock-off of Santanas Smooth. On One Knight and Together, Wildhorn seems to be trying to come up with boy band ballad material for *NSync. The short-lived, neo-swing trend of the 90s is evoked with The Mad Hatter. And I Will Prevail sounds like something Bon Jovi might want to consider, or perhaps Meat Loaf. The inevitable Off with Their Heads, on the other hand, is a pastiche of a 30s soft-shoe number. Of course, the real comfort zone for the songwriter whose one big hit was Whitney Houstons Where Do Broken Hearts Go is the adult contemporary ballad, and Wildhorn has come up with a couple in Once More I Can See and Heroes (though the latter also could have fallen off a Jewel album, completing the 90s nostalgia trip). It might seem that these different pop styles, in addition to being out of date, wouldnt necessarily work together in the same score, and they dont, really. The performers do their best to realize Wildhorns vision; its the vision itself that is dim. [ Wonderland closed on Broadway on May 15, 2011, after 33 performances.] ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi