Ali in Wonder(Eng)land review at Jacksons Lane: Bureaucracy vs. Humanity
LegalAliens Theatre’s migrant-led adaptation of Alice in Wonderland reimagines Wonderland as Britain’s immigration system. Its central metaphor is inventive, but the production’s most compelling moments come from the performers themselves.
The strange logic of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland makes it a surprisingly natural setting for a story about authority, uncertainty and belonging. In Ali in Wonder(Eng)land, Ali arrives in England expecting opportunity but finds himself navigating a world of interviews, paperwork and official procedures where the rules seem difficult to understand. LegalAliens Theatre’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland uses Carroll’s landscape of shifting logic and uncertain authority to explore what happens when individuals encounter systems that have the power to shape their lives.
The production’s most effective idea is also its simplest. Performed by an ensemble from LegalAliens Theatre’s Tottenham Project, it avoids giving Ali to one actor alone. Instead, a blue cloak passes from performer to performer; whoever wears it becomes Ali. It is a simple theatrical gesture, but one that allows Ali to change with each performer who takes on the role.
I was less convinced when the adaptation seemed determined to match Carroll scene for scene. Some episodes feel included because they echo Alice in Wonderland, not because they reveal anything new. The satire of bureaucracy lands quickly, then circles back to make the same point again. The production has enough material of its own that it doesn’t need to lean so heavily on the framework.
One of the production’s strongest scenes is also one of its simplest. A performer describing Persian expressions that locate love and grief in the liver begins as a joke about translation before quietly revealing how language carries entirely different ways of understanding emotion. Nothing is overstated or heavily signposted. It is simply one person explaining something that cannot be translated word for word. There are several moments like this, where performers bring fragments of their own languages and lives into the performance, and the play becomes richer as a result.
That unevenness runs through the production. Some members of the ensemble have an easy stage presence; others are still finding it. Transitions occasionally lose momentum and the physical theatre isn’t always as precise as it could be. Yet there’s little self-consciousness about the performances. The cast seem comfortable sharing the stage with one another, and that generosity carries the evening through its rougher patches.
The production’s central metaphor is clever, but it is also its limitation. The more Ali in Wonder(Eng)land tries to explain migration through Wonderland, the less compelling it becomes. The strongest scenes are the ones where the performers stop carrying the weight of the concept and the play becomes about them.
Ali in Wonder(Eng)land
LegalAliens Theatre
Jacksons Lane, 269A Archway Road, London N6 5AA
Dates: Tuesday 14 – Wednesday 15 July 2026
Performance times: 7.30pm (both evenings); Wednesday matinee 1.30pm.
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
