Jonathan Miller’s radical television play reimagines Lewis Carroll’s classic not as a children’s fantasy but as a surreal and unsettling Victorian dream.
A bored young Alice (Anne-Marie Mallik) drowses on a riverbank and follows a flustered White Rabbit (Wilfrid Brambell) down a hole into a strange, illogical world. There she encounters a series of peculiar characters, all presented as stuffy Victorian figures. Her bizarre journey includes conversations with a philosophical Caterpillar (Sir Michael Redgrave), a visit to the pepper-obsessed Duchess (Leo McKern), and an appearance at a languid tea party hosted by the Mad Hatter (Peter Cook), the March Hare (Michael Gough), and the Dormouse (Wilfrid Lawson). Alice eventually finds herself in the court of the tyrannical King (Peter Sellers) and Queen of Hearts (Alison Leggatt), where a nonsensical trial forces her to question the reality of her experience.
This landmark production was a deliberate and controversial break with tradition. Director Jonathan Miller stripped the story of its nursery-rhyme whimsy, choosing instead to interpret the narrative as an adult’s dream of childhood, shot through with a sense of loss and unease. Gone are the anthropomorphic animal costumes; in their place is an astonishing cast of actors in period dress whose behaviour only suggests their animal counterparts. The decision to shoot in black-and-white, combined with a haunting sitar score by Ravi Shankar, gives the film a languid, claustrophobic atmosphere. Far from a colourful romp, Miller’s Wonderland is a decaying, formal garden populated by melancholic eccentrics, a work of television art that remains profoundly unsettling.
Broadcast: BBC One, 1 Episode, Wednesday 28 December 1966
Adapted from the novel by Lewis Carroll by: Jonathan Miller
Director: Jonathan Miller
Producer: Jonathan Miller
Designer: Julia Trevelyan Oman
Music: Ravi Shankar
Main Cast: Anne-Marie Mallik (Alice), Peter Sellers (King of Hearts), Sir John Gielgud (Mock Turtle), Sir Michael Redgrave (Caterpillar), Alan Bennett (Mouse), Wilfrid Brambell (White Rabbit), Peter Cook (Mad Hatter), Alison Leggatt (Queen of Hearts), Leo McKern (Duchess), Wilfrid Lawson (Dormouse), Malcolm Muggeridge (Gryphon), John Bird (Frog Footman), Finlay Currie (Dodo), Michael Gough (March Hare)
