La Scala Theatre Ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Review
May 27, 2026 | Teatro alla Scala – Milan, Italy
Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland arrived at Teatro alla Scala for its Italian debut this May, scoring sold-out shows across all performances.
The production embraces the familiar whimsy of Lewis Carroll’s story, using inventive scenery and visual effects to create a world where reality gives way to fantasy. Wheeldon’s Wonderland exists somewhere between narrative ballet and contemporary spectacle, moving fluidly between Victorian England, the increasingly illogical world beyond the rabbit hole, and, ultimately, the modern world from which Alice’s dream emerges.
The score, composed by Joby Talbot, reflects the breadth of his musical background, which includes both concert works and film music. Throughout the ballet, Talbot’s music shifts between classical and cinematic concepts, as the choreography swings between traditional and contemporary styles.
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La Scala Theatre Ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Review
Act I opens at a garden party in Oxford. Here, Wheeldon introduces the characters who will later reappear in scenes as their Wonderland counterparts. The audience meets Alice (Camilla Cerulli), Lewis Carroll (Mattia Semperboni), the gardener’s assistant Jack (Nicola Del Freo), and Alice’s mother (Alice Mariani).
While Alice remains distinctly herself throughout the ballet, Carroll will become the White Rabbit, Jack the Jack of Hearts, and Alice’s mother the Queen of Hearts.
The central conflict was introduced in the first scene and developed throughout the rest of the ballet. Jack gives Alice a rose, and she gives him a jam tart in return. When Alice’s mother sees Jack holding the tart, she assumes he has stolen it and scolds him. In Oxford, the incident is minor, but in Wonderland, the perceived stolen tart will potentially cost Jack his head.
These dynamics were further highlighted by Talbot’s music which punctuated the scene with a stark, high-pitched ringing motif that cut through the otherwise light atmosphere.
The transition between the two worlds was handled with perceptible inciting incident.
Lewis Carroll prepared to photograph Alice and her sisters beneath the cloth of an oversized Victorian camera. Once the photo was taken, a large amount of smoke appeared from the flash lamp, creating an atmosphere that was noticeably different only to Carroll and Alice. The guests at the party slowed to an unnaturally measured pace, and time appeared suspended to everyone but the two main subjects.
The only character transformation the audience sees in real-time is that of Carroll, who, while beneath the cloth, began to twitch his foot in a kind of rabbit-thumping manner.
The contrast between Carroll and The White Rabbit was conveyed exceptionally by Semperboni, who, within only a few seconds, successfully transitioned his character from the graceful Lewis Carroll to the wildly anxious White Rabbit.
Once transformed and unveiled from the camera cloth, the White Rabbit motions for Alice to follow him to the table where the adults are partaking in tea and sandwiches. They climb up the table to find a large hole that has been carved in the middle of the table, into which the White Rabbit lifts Alice up and throws her down.
Cerulli carried one of the ballet’s most difficult responsibilities. While the characters around her transformed into exaggerated Wonderland counterparts, Alice remained recognizably herself. If the White Rabbit serves as Alice’s Virgil, Alice in turn becomes Dante, the static protagonist that the audience perceives Wonderland through.
Cerulli maintained a childlike curiousity and energy throughout the entire duration of the ballet. It should also be noted here that Cerulli did, in fact, remain on stage for every scene.
Alice’s descent down the rabbit hole is realized through a series of projections. The sequence is visually engaging in its own right, but Wheeldon leveraged the transitory space to be interactive with the audience.
As Alice’s projection fell, flowers from the “Golden Afternoon” waltzed in between the rows of the stalls, while confetti sprinkled down from above. It was particularly delightful to watch the reaction of the audience during this moment, as children and adults alike abandoned themselves to the ballet’s mounting excitement.
The next scenes boasted a masterful use of both modern and antique set designs.
Alice’s changes in size (prompted by the words “eat me” and “drink me” projected across the backdrop) were conveyed well, using light projections to warp the setting according to her dimension.
Contrastingly, in the next scene, Alice finds herself swimming across a sea, which was constructed in the Victorian mechanical style, each wave its own wooden board stretching across the stage.
Shortly after, elements of comical horror were introduced in the storyline when Alice ventured to the Duchess’s nightmarish butcher kitchen that could’ve been created by Guillermo del Toro himself. There, she was met by the Fish (Alessandro Francesconi ) and Frog (Frank Aduca ) Footmen, the Duchess (Gabriele Corrado) and the Chef (Antonella Albano).
Francesconi and Aduca displayed remarkable amounts of youthful energy and charisma. Aduca was explosive in his frog-like demeanor and had choreography that surely captured the majority of audience’s attention during his stage time with Francesconi, although some of his jumps seemed at times a bit more sporadic than probably what the choreography called for.
Corrado and Albano portrayed a relationship that was utterly entertaining and played well off of each other’s characters.
It is at the end of Act I that Jack the gardener reappears as the Jack of Hearts, hurrying across stage with the infamous jam tart. The image invokes a sense of quick-paced continuity in the story, rather than the conclusion of a first chapter, ahead of the second act.
Act II opens with the appearance of the Cheshire Cat, realized through an inventive piece of theatrical design. The cat’s body, detached and seemingly floating across the stage, is maneuvered by members of the corps concealed beneath it, in a manner reminiscent of the dragon figures animated by teams of performers during Chinese New Year celebrations.
Alice soon wanders toward the tea party attended by the Mad Hatter (performed in tap shoes by Christian Faggetti), the Hare (Andrea Crescenzi), and the dormouse (Benedetta Giuliano). The three – Faggetti, Crescenzi and Montefiori – proved to be quite the spectacle.
Faggetti portrayed his role with an air of daunting whimsy, as he’s done successfully with similar characters in previous ballets. Although he’s entitled to well-deserved recognition for his performance, which must have distinctly called for chaos, I found myself wishing for cleaner tap sounds from the stage.
As the tea party concludes, Alice stumbles upon the Caterpillar (Gioacchino Starace). Once again, projections play an important role in shaping the scene, filling the stage with drifting clouds of smoke and the famous line from the story:
“Who… Are… You?”
Emerging from this haze, Starace delivered a convincing performance, using precise contractions and fluid rolling movements to suggest the creature’s slow, undulating nature. Another imagery of note was the portrayal of tiny catepillar legs moving fluidly across the stage via numerous amounts of people en pointe.
Act II concludes in the Golden Afternoon where flowers move across the stage in choreography firmly rooted in classical ballet technique. The corps, as flowers, delivered notable penché promenades with precision, while Alice and Jack followed with a technically strong pas de deux.
The scene was the ballet’s most traditional moment, a surprisingly refreshing break from the more inventive choreography.
As the curtain fell on Act II, the audience was given a final warning of the darker events that were to unfold.
Descending onto the stage was a giant axe, its blade marked by a single drop of blood shaped like a heart, and the words “Act III” projected on the blade. The axe remained visible throughout the interval.
Act III begins with the three gardeners – Saïd Ramos Ponce, Domenico di Cristo and Alessandro Paoloni – painting the roses in the Queen’s garden red. Technically speaking, the gardeners were among my favorites on stage that evening – their ability to dance in sync, with the exact energy and emotion, was unmatched.
The Queen of Hearts had made brief appearances earlier in the ballet, gliding across the stage in an enormous metallic gown. In Act III, however, the character returns in an even more exaggerated metallic gown, seemingly double the height and width of the previous one.
Her entrance set the tone for the scene: when the oversized dress opened to reveal the King of Hearts seated comfortably inside reading a newspaper, there was audible laughter from the audience which demonstrated Wheeldon’s flair for visual comedy. More importantly, it reaffirmed the audience’s engagement as the ballet entered its final act.
Much could be said about the frenzy that ensued in the third act – the corps transforming into flamingos for the Queen’s croquet match, young dancers appearing as hedgehogs and tumbling across the stage as croquet balls, and the constant stream of visual invention that filled the scene.
Yet the act belonged unquestionably to Alice Mariani’s Queen of Hearts.
Mariani delivered a committed performance, embracing the character’s absurdity, vanity, and menace in equal measure. Particularly memorable was her solo which appeared to parody the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. Here, instead of suitors, Mariani danced with her card subjects, manipulating them with comic tyranny as they partnered her while visibly trembling.
Hilariously done.
Semperboni, in his portrayal of the White Rabbit, and Fagetti, in his portrayal of the Mad Hatter, were also notable in their performances during the third act; the former delivered a nice solo and the latter produced a very clean tap performance.
The climax of the third act came when Alice and Jack were discovered to be in the garden. Alice, after having smuggled various characters out of sight of the murderous Queen, was brought to a makeshift court for Jack who was being sentenced for the stolen the jam tart.
The witnesses – the Mad Hatter, the Catepillar, the Hare, the Dormouse, the Fish and Frog Footmen, the Duchess and the Cook – all took the stand to condemn Jack of having been a thief. Alice stepped in during the sentencing and placed blame on herself for having given him the tart, and the Queen in turn sought to cut off Alice’s head herself.
As Alice tried to escape, she pushed a witness over who then pushed over another until all had fallen on stage, including the Queen. The domino effect of characters was great fun, a conclusory act that surely even the performers enjoyed.
In the final scene, Alice awakened in a contemporary setting, having fallen asleep while reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The revelation reframed the idea that both Wonderland and the Victorian world of the first act exist within the imagination of a twenty-first-century girl.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland concluded by returning to one of its central themes, playing between tradition and modernity. Alice and Jack, now dressed in contemporary clothing, meet and take a photograph together on an iPhone.
It is a fitting bookend to the ballet: the Victorian camera that launched Alice’s adventure is replaced by an iPhone, collapsing the distance between Carroll’s world and our own.
The final curtain was met with warm applause for the entire cast, but the evening’s most enthusiastic ovation belonged unmistakably to Mariani. Her Queen of Hearts dominated the final act with her commitment to comedy, leaving one of the strongest impressions in a production already overflowing with imagination.
Featured Photo of La Scala Theatre Ballet‘s Camilla Cerulli and Mattia Semperboni in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Photo by Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala.
