Behind the mirror

Behind the Mirror is a performance inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Before the premiere, we saw a dance performance by 20 pupils from Skedsmo municipality. We were impressed by how good the children were! It's incredibly cool that the children get to perform. After all, this is a festival that focuses on children and young people.

Before the performance, some of the children came up to us and started talking to us. They were super cuddly, which made it extra special to see them dance.

The children's dance performance took place outside the hall. In the room, there were two large screens with pictures inspired by the fairy tale about Alice and on the tables there were bottles with notes labeled "drink me". This gave us a feeling that we were part of the story, which we really liked. It was easy to see that the children had practiced a lot.

When the children had finished dancing, a man in a skirt came walking along. He had a large pocket watch and said he was in a hurry. We immediately recognized the character from Alice in Wonderland. The man in the role, Stuart Waters, made us all laugh as he plowed his way through the audience with his carriage.

During the dance performance in the large hall, we heard about many of the different events from Alice in Wonderland. The two sailors, the tarts, the tea party and the rabbit were all mentioned. As someone who has read and watched other versions of Alice in Wonderland, I thought it was incredibly exciting to compare the performance with them.

We in SUS agree that they managed to describe the different events from the original play in a very nice way. In addition to telling the story through dance, the two characters spoke.

Parts of the dialog were pre-recorded. We liked this very much. The sentences were often played several times, which gave us the feeling of being in a fairytale world where everyone was crazy. Even though not all of us in SUS liked the combination of Norwegian and English speech, I thought it was cool. The combination isn't something I've heard much of before, and it was exciting to experience something new. The variation in the language also reinforced the feeling that we were in a fairytale world with Alice.

The madman in the play had good contact with the audience. He spoke several times to the children in the front row, which they seemed to enjoy. He also went up and spoke to the rest of the audience. We at SUS thought this was cool.

What also impressed us were the dancers. Silje Bævre Lian and Stuart Waters were absolutely incredible! They were very talented and close-knit. It was easy to see that there was a lot of rehearsal behind the performance. Both were very good at getting into the roles. One of the things we particularly liked was how they used the black jacket in the dance. The variation of the dance in the play was good. This meant that it did not become boring.

As the audience moved from the Blackbox entrance to the main stage, there was a lot of pushing and some buzzing. It was also very difficult to watch the dance performance that the children had. This was because there were so many people in such a small space.

We in SUS choose to give this play four out of five theater masks, because not all of us enjoyed the performance equally.