Jack Murphy does not like to use the ‘B’ word. The lyricist for Wonderland: Alice’s New Musical Adventure is a superstitious man. He doesn’t want to jinx the new show produced by the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and set to premiere there this fall. But then again, the man who also wrote the lyrics for Broadway’s The Civil War and Jekyll & Hyde is pretty optimistic about this production.
“I can tell you, this is odd for me,” Murphy jokes from his home in Connecticut. “I’m excited about the book and the music. I really think people will like this and they will have a good time. Of course we want to make it to Broadway, but you never know how things will go.”
Murphy’s lyrics are combined with songs by Frank Wildhorn, who composed the music for Jekyll & Hyde and the Scarlett Pimpernel. The pair is also the creative force behind the musical success of LGBT icon and songstress Linda Eder.
“Frank is always a glass-is-half-full kind of guy,” Murphy says. “I’m the half-empty guy and it’s always been that way. But I feel a kinship with this show and I feel like it combines everything I like about music and theater.”
Wonderland premiers on Dec. 5 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (TBPAC). After a month-long run ending Jan. 3, it moves to Houston’s Alley Theater, where it will incorporate any changes deemed needed based on the experience in Tampa.
“Figuring out how a production makes it to Broadway is like the mystery of where elephants go to die,” Murphy laughs.
“No one knows. It’s a process. We will make adjustments as we go based on the real-time feedback of those initial audiences. These things tend to get a life of their own, but I think we’re onto something.”
Murphy has been a part of Wonderland since the beginning. The writer says he and Wildhorn toyed with creating a musical version of Alice in Wonderland “for years,” but the concept of an updated version was tossed aside. Both men worked on other projects, but the idea was resurrected when Wildhorn taught a class at the Broadway Theater Project in Tampa and had his students perform an older version of his “Alice” musical. TBPAC president Judith Lisi liked what she heard, and now the respected performing arts center is producing the full musical.
“The project became sort of real as Judith pursued it,” Murphy says. “It went through a lot of changes, as these things will, and we wound up with this modern tale.”
Murphy is co-writing the book with director Greg Boyd, the artistic director of the Alley Theater.
Back through the looking glass
Wonderland has characters and a plot to which any theatergoer can relate, according to Murphy. The story focuses on Alice Cornwinkle, the great-granddaughter of Alice Little, the woman upon which the original Alice books were based.
The audience meets this modern day Alice in New York City, where she’s a writer of children’s books juggling motherhood, a crumbling marriage and has severe case of writer’s block.
“She’s a modern woman carrying all these things and she basically reaches her tipping point,” Murphy says. “She’s invited to speak at a rooftop affair in New York honoring the 150th anniversary of the Alice books and she has a complete nervous breakdown.”
Murphy won’t give away much more of the plot, but says that his modern day Alice finds herself in Wonderland searching for her daughter, encountering familiar characters and battling the Queen of Hearts.
“I think anyone can relate to the basics of this story, which is finding your own self,” Murphy says. “I think the gay and lesbian audience will connect with it because they have had to understand who they truly are. Alice does the same thing. She’s a 30-something woman at the end of her rope trying to discover her true identity. She has to find what’s important in life.”
Murphy believes that everyone—not just LGBTs—will connect with the subplot of self-discovery in Wonderland. The bottom line is that every person knows his or her true self, even if we often try to ignore it.
“I think the essence of who we are sometimes gets lost,” Murphy says. “It’s always there, and it rarely ever lies to us. But it can get lost in our efforts of day to day living. We all face the same problems.”
Of course, Wonderland is also about fun and color. It is already shaping up to be a huge opportunity for incredibly colorful set designs and costumes, although Murphy admits he hasn’t seen any of the designs himself.
“Wonderland is a place of colorful, crazy things,” he says. “I don’t want to speak for the designers but this thing is called Wonderland—it’s going to be wacky.”
Incomparable
With the success of the Broadway smash Wicked, a ‘pre-imagining’ of the Wizard of Oz, it’s not surprising that fairy tales are suddenly a hot commodity for musicals. But Murphy says any comparisons between Wicked and Wonderland should stop there.
“It’s difficult to react when someone compares this to Wicked—we should be so lucky,” Murphy says. “Wicked is its own thing—brilliant and fun while still dealing with some heavy topics. Stephen [Schwartz] is a great writer and Wicked is what it is. I think Wonderland has some things to say as well about searching for whom you really are, but these productions are two different animals.”
Besides, it’s much too early to make comparisons of any kind, especially since the casting for Wonderland was only announced in early August.
The talented principals in this world premiere musical include: Julie Brooks (Fiddler on the Roof national tour) as Alice’s daughter, Chloe; Janet Dacal (In the Heights, Good Vibrations) as Alice; Eugene Fleming (Fosse) as the Caterpillar; Jose Llana (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as El Gato; Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!) as the Queen of Hearts; Darren Ritchie (Dracula: The Musical) as Jack/White Knight; Nikki Snelson (Legally Blonde) as the Mad Hatter; and Ed Staudenmayer (Forbidden Broadway) as the Rabbit.
“I’m excited about this,” Murphy says. “And for me to say I’m excited is a big deal.”
