Alice: An Adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Oberon Modern Plays)

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Paton, Maureen (10 December 2011). "Sam West: My family values". The Guardian. UK . Retrieved 30 June 2015.

Theatre review: Other Hands at Soho Theatre". Britishtheatreguide.info . Retrieved 26 November 2016.

Wade was born in Bedford, Bedfordshire. She grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where her father worked for a computer company. [1] After completing her secondary education at Lady Manners School in Bakewell, Derbyshire, she studied drama at Bristol University and was later a member of the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers' Programme. Otherwise, I thought the whole cast was exceptionally talented. No problems about voice production there, and the singing was impressive. The women caught my eye in the first scene, Beatie Edney and Pippa Haywood (Duchess/Red Queen) but so also did John Marquez (a variety of strong roles including Humpty), and Jonathan McGuiness as a sensitive Dad and weak King of Hearts. Tribes have always been interesting to me, and the vintage tribe – people who feel they are born in a time they don’t belong in – seemed like a really good canvas to talk about lots of issues around marriage and domesticity. On a feezing cold night in December a play was staged. A play that told of wondrous creatures and of things beyond imagining. A play in which the ordinary every day cares of the audience were suspended for a while as they entered a land of talking caterpillars, a beautiful blue cat, flamingos and hedgehogs, a turtle with a heavy load, a Queen with a nasty temper, a crazy Mad Hatter, and a little girl who having lost her brother in an accident dreams her way out of her sadness. Yes folks, It’s Alice in Wonderland, but not quite as you know it. This is Alice, by Laura Wade, adapted from Lewis Carroll’s famous tale, here on stage at The Criterion Theatre, Earlsdon. It’s a show that draws heavily upon the talents of the theatre’s young drama class participants and places them alongside some of the Criterion’s more familiar faces, giving them a chance to gain experience in the spotlight. It’s a good-hearted romp through a classic tale, spiced up with music from The Arctic Monkeys. The white rabbit as a hoodie-wearing yoof? The Queen of hearts as Alice’s own mother? Croquet as a bargaining stage in mourning? It's Alice in Wonderland, but not as we know it.

Laura Wade adapted Sarah Waters’ novel Tipping The Velvet for the stage in 2015, a story which tells the story of a Victorian woman who falls in love with a cross-dresser. Admittedly, it doesn’t sound astoundingly relevant, but the themes of acceptance and cultural oppression are certainly applicable to aspects of today’s society. More obviously pertinent is her play Other Hands about a couple that has semi-platonic relationships with other people and both suffer from repetitive strain injuries. The major theme of the play is actually how reliance on technology has desensitised us towards the feelings of others, and how emotional discrepancies have become normalised in modern relationships. The picture it paints is quite bleak, but it certainly makes you think twice about how people relate to each other in the modern world. 4. There is incredible variety in her work It's a conceit that pays off well, given that Carroll's heroine is usually defined by her capacity for shrinkage, growth spurts and bouts of tears. Ruby Bentall's Alice is an obstreperous, streetwise kid who responds in a contemporary manner. "It must be a computer game," she decides. "I just need to work out how to get on to the next level." From 2007 to 2011, Wade lived with actor Samuel West, [21] son of actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales. [22] [23] After a two-year split, Wade and West reunited, and now have two daughters, born in 2014 and 2017. [24] Plays [ edit ] Published [ edit ] Did having your own children while writing it influence the plot or the message? During the six years we were developing the show, Tamara [Harvey, the director], Katherine [Parkinson, who plays the lead role] and I had two children each, but we never ended up giving the couple in the play children because it felt like a purer decision for them to live the 50s if they didn’t have them. The idea of being a stay-at-home mum seemed more socially acceptable than a woman leaving her job to be a housewife and look after her husband.Wade is not posh. She grew up in Sheffield, where her father worked for a computer company. "I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was... appalling ... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did." Her school was discouraging when she suggested that drama might be her thing, so she arranged her own work experience at the Crucible theatre and it was there, at the age of 18, that her first play was staged, in its studio. "It was called Limbo. It was about teenagers in Sheffield. You will never be able to find a copy of it and I'm quite happy about that. All the people involved with it have been killed." She giggles. Still, the Crucible remains her ideal theatre – "I still think its main house is the most exciting space in the country" – and this summer, to her great joy, it will stage her play, Alice, based on Alice in Wonderland. Personally, I would have liked more glitter in the set - well it is Christmas - and couldn't really recommend it for the under tens if only because of its length and complexity. I may be proved wrong by the end of the week. Wade's play will open just one month before the general election. No doubt the Royal Court, which commissioned the work, is pretty gleeful about this. Dominic Cooke, the theatre's artistic director, match-made her with the director of Posh, Lyndsey Turner, knowing that both of them were interested in working on the idea of wealth. A Bullingdon-style club at a play's heart is likely to stir more than the usual interest in a new work. Who knows, it may even swing the odd vote. But Wade is ambivalent about the timing. "It's a very visible time to have it go on and for me, it asks big social and cultural questions as well as political ones – and I don't want people to be disappointed when they find it's not just a big stitch-up. Because it isn't."

Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for Breathing Corpses and Colder Than Here, 2005 Theatre review: Breathing Corpses at Royal Court Theatre Upstairs". Britishtheatreguide.info . Retrieved 26 November 2016. Wade is now an accomplished 36-year-old West End playwright who has written about death, terminal illness and what might have happened to the lead female characters in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale during their 16-year exile from court. Now she is once again defending her assumptions about the upper classes because the film version of Posh, re-titled The Riot Club, opens this month, and Wade has adapted the screenplay. To put it simply, Colder Than Here is about a woman dying from cancer, and how she and her family try to come to terms with it. And yet, Wade somehow manages to make the play easy – even enjoyable – to read. By mixing dry humour with the hardship of accepting a terminal illness, Wade has created a window into a 21st century dysfunctional family. Via undeniably difficult subject matters, the play manages to leave audiences with the resonating message that anyone can get through hard times – Myra’s unorthodox way of coping is to watch Have I Got News For You while sat in her own coffin. There are few modern plays which treat such complex themes with a similar buoyancy. 2. The adaptations you know are even better in the original Disney+ Reveals New Original Series "Rivals", an Outrageously Bold Eight-Part Saga Full of Power, Betrayal and Romance, Based on Jilly Cooper's Iconic Novel".

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Wade adapted the unfinished Jane Austen novel The Watsons into a play, which premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre on 3 November 2018, directed by Samuel West. [17] It had a further run at the Menier Chocolate Factory from 20 September 2019. [18] The West End transfer of The Watsons was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. [19] Laura Wade is an English playwright. She is the recipient of the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright (2005) for Breathing Corpses and Colder Than Here.

Having recently read the script of Laura Wade's Posh (though sadly not seen the play), I had high expectations of this production and was not disappointed. The dialogue in the various encounters on Alice's journey through Wonderland is sharp, witty, and comfortably includes local and national reference. The production is fast moving, amusing, inventive, and visually delightful. It was good to see a stage so peopled with actors (including a large group of children), in interesting groupings and emitting so much energy. London's Lyric Hammersmith to Present World Premiere of Laura Wade's Tipping the Velvet". playbill.com. Playbill. 15 April 2015 . Retrieved 19 April 2015. Throughout the long development process, Lavender adds, Wade kept a close hold on the boys she had created.Her next play, Tipping The Velvet, an adaptation of Sarah Walters' novel, premiered at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in September 2015 before transferring to the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. In 2018, Wade's Home, I'm Darling opened at Theatr Clwyd in July, before transferring to the National Theatre. Wade's adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished story, The Watsons, premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in November of the same year.