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Operation Wonderland
- Tour & Scottish Premiere.
Premiered 10 Feb at Alsgar Arts Centre. The last play in Point Blank's
Dissent Trilogy after Dead Causes and Nothing To Declare.
Writer/ Director - Liz Tomlin.
Dramaturg/Additional Direction - Steve Jackson.
Assistant Director - James Gilbreath
Designer - Richard Lowden.
Wonderland Costumes -Jackies Novelties.
Lighting Designer - Patrick Collins.
Sound Designer - David Mitchell.
Company - Point Blank Brief note about
the company supplied by company.
Cast - here .
2004 Tour Dates and Times - at Traverse Edinburgh 1 - 3
April at 7:30pm 0141 228 1404
at The Arches Glasgow 30 April & 1 May at 7:30pm 0141 565
1023 English tour dates here .
Seen to review at Traverse Theatre on 1 April 2004.
Run Time - 1 hour 15 mins no Interval .
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Is this our Wonderland?
You get a ticket to Wonderland as you enter this show. By the time you
leave you may wonder whether if you were given a ticket to enter your
life now you would use it or tear it up and try to find a freer way to
live.
This play spells out our cowardly new existence in this allegorical alternative
world. It's very disquieting. Not least because if had been created before
9/11 you might have laughed uproariously at its whispering mice who aren't
answerable to the State or at the Blue Fairy who gives colour coded red,
amber and green balloons to the children after they've told her their
wishes. Those sporting red and amber ones and their carers are picked
out by the whispering mice to be photographed before they leave the park.
Jed shoves rubbish at Wonderland the last human disposer of what the visitors
discard, his colleagues have been replaced by machines. But he's started
his own wee resistance by the huge round metal rubbish bins. He's disabled
one of the monitors that keep a watch on all of the pleasure park. Wonderland
frisks its visitors, we discover removing all outside provisions so you
have to eat, drink and consume only their products - no other enterprise
is allowed. Then the Blue Fairy appears and offers to grant him his wish.
The first wish backfires for Jed, the Wonderland magic airbrushes out
the shower of ordure he and the Blue Fairy arrange, and is turned by the
organisers into another of their Charm Offensives. Like in the real world
remove the ability to make small protests stick or cause small changes
and the stakes on both sides get raised. So Jed's next wish coached and
persuaded by his strange companion seeks to shake the foundations of the
park on the day of the President's annual visit.
The last in a trilogy of plays from Point Blank about dissent, Operation
Wonderland wraps its stimulating and very complex theme in a way which
is well achieved hair's breath between distracting laughter and sickening
realisation. Operation Wonderland is a powerful reminder that there is
a real danger that we are now becoming increasingly active abdicators
of our own individual and collective power, playing into the big nasty
bullies' hands, so that the oppressors of our freedoms may be in our own
backyard and not just in foreign disaffected lands.
© Thelma Good 1 April 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast: Stewart Lodge and Jenny Ayres.
2004 Tour Details of Point Blank's production
of Operation Wonderland .
Tour begins
7 Feb at 7:30pm Preview Rotherham Arts Centre 01709 823 621.
10 Feb at 7:30pm Alsager Arts Centre 0161 247 5302.
11 Feb at 7:30pm York St Johns University College.
12 Feb at 7:30pm Doncaster College Harvey Theatre 01302 553 865.
26 Feb at 8:15pm Aberystwyth Arts Centre 01970 623232.
28 Feb at 8pm Uley, Gloucester at Prema, 01453 860 703.
1 March at 8pm Exeter Phoenix 01392 667080.
4March at 8pm Salford Robert Powell Theatre 0161 295 3248.
5 -6 March at 7:45pm Sheffield Crucible Studio 0114 249 6000.
20 March at 8pm Birmingham MAC 0121 440 3838.
24 March at 7:30pm Wolverhampton Arena Theatre 01902 321321.
1 - 3 April at 7:30pm Edinburgh Traverse Theatre 0131 228 1404.
6 -24 April at 8pm Suns at 5pm Not Mons London Latchmere Theatre 0207
978 7040.
26 April at 7:30pm Chesterfield Arts 01246 500 578.
30 April - 1 May at 7:30pm Glasgow The Arches 0141 565 1023.
6 May at 7:30pm Trowbridge Arc Theatre 01225 766 241.
8 May at 8pm Newbury Corn Exchange 01635 522 733.
Tour ends
Point Blank's Company History
Point Blank is the professional touring company in residence at the Open
Performance Centre, Sheffield. It was founded in 1999 by a merger of the
work of its artistic directors, Steve Jackson and Liz Tomlin.
Point Blank’s first production, Dead Causes, toured to 16 venues
nation-wide to critical and popular acclaim. Their second show, Nothing
to Declare, was first performed as a work in progress at Battersea Arts
Centre in December 2001, before embarking on a Spring tour across the
country in 2002. The show was produced at the Edinburgh Festival at the
Pleasance Theatre for the Edinburgh festival in association with Martin
Sutherland. Due to its Edinburgh success, Nothing To Declare toured again
in the Spring 2003. Current show, Operation Wonderland, was given a rehearsed
reading at Wimbledon Studio Theatre in March 2003.
The company’s work includes: 2000/1 2 National tours of production,
Dead Causes, Year Of Artist Award: Investigation into Performance Technique,Performance
Studies International – The Apologetic Body (work presentation),
2001/2 National Tour of Nothing To Declare, Nothing To Declare Edinburgh
Fringe Festival, Pleasance Theatre, 2003/4 Nothing To Declare National
Tour, Operation Wonderland National Tour.
Point Blank also publish articles and offer practical workshop/residencies
on their internationally renowned research into performer training; dramaturgy
and educational practice in association with Manchester Metropolitan University.
Point Blank email.
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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