Jabberwocky – Youth Music Theatre UK – The Other Palace

Jabberwocky – Youth Music Theatre UK – The Other Palace, London, continues until 14 April 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Stunning music, classy songs, thrilling dance… the Youth Music Theatre UK has found another winner, this time using Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem from Alice Through the Looking Glass as the basis for an all-girls musical that gets better the longer it goes.

They are at The Other Palace sharing the week with their other new musical, Tess of The D’Urbervilles, and a cast of 21, some playing two roles, take delight in fleshing out Susannah Pearse’s book and lyrics and Rebecca Applin’s glorious score.

Who is Jabberwocky? The Jabberwock is the mystical beast who has to be confronted and slain. Many of us grew up having to learn the poem. I can still recall the first four lines:

‘‘twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe”

Would it be committed to memory if written as sense rather than nonsense? ‘It was evening, and the smooth, active badgers/were scratching and boring holes/All unhappy were the parrots/and the grave turtle squeaked out.’ Assuredly not!

In Pearse’s re-working of it, Flora and Jess are two girls from different times, contemporary and Victorian. Jess is being bullied at school and Flora forced to marry someone not of her choosing. They meet across time and simultaneously fall through a mirror to find themselves in Wonderland.

They meet characters not only from Carroll but Edward Lear too who help the girls confront their fears and gain the confidence to defeat the dreaded Jabberwock.

Composer Applin said the show was a celebration of everything that makes us different, of not fitting in with the norms of society and of relishing our individuality.

It’s a big cast, well driven and nurtured by director Luke Sheppard, and a tremendous team effort. They were all good but three stood out to this critic:

Anabella Fairgrieve, a 16-year-old from Warminster with a voice to die for, whose duet with Gwen Subuh-Symons (playing Jess, excellent) on ‘We Can Change the Rules’ stole the show. That and ‘Beyond the Mirror’ were the two songs I carried away with me.

Maisie Seaton, a 16-year-old Glaswegian, was the girl with the multi-coloured horns on her head who played Tumtum, a tree in the original story and nasty with it. She developed the character with verve and sang up a storm and also played Lauren very well.

And Beth Nicholson, a bouncy wee lass from Aberdeen with phenomenal energy and impish enthusiasm, was a total joy as Sarah from Modern World and Jumbly from the Borogoves.

So were the ensemble routines so captivatingly worked out by choreographer Heather Douglas – and the six musicians under MD Tom Turner deserve a name check because they made a gorgeous sound.

So, well done Turner and Megan Hilling on keyboards, Nicola Chang on drums, Rosie Moon on bass, Henry Giudici on guitars and Pooja Low on flute.

I asked a number of people, young and old, whether they understood the show because my quartet was baffled. The unanimous reply “sort of” suggests it was a bit of a head-scratcher all round, particularly for younger family members. Those who knew the poem had a big start but does it really matter?

The only negative concerns the programme: there were no pictures or biographies of the cast or any sign of a song list (there were 22 of them). Every musical needs a song list and YMT are not the only ones who fail to provide basic information.

That apart, it was a beautiful evening when outside it was raining cats and dogs. I may not have entirely understood it but I ended up loving it.

Jeremy Chapman