Enter Offstage

The anticipation of seeing Alice in Wonderland had me giddy—the characters, the wordplay, the wonder , and, not to be forgotten in such a fabulous list, young Alice herself; after all, Wonderland represents the inner-workings of her child-mind. At least that’s the publicized theory behind this production: Jungian psychology.  Photo (stolen from facebook) Credit: Raymond Rivera Leeward Theatre, director Betty Burdick, and designers John Signor, Donald J. Ranney, Jr., Sarah Whitehead, Mark Kalani Imaizumi, Chelsea Campbell, Cocoa Chandelier, and Johathan Reyn present a landscape of enchantment inhabited by brilliantly decorated characters. The spectacle of colorful set pieces, props, costumes, makeup and lighting combine with musical notes of tantalizingly mysterious charm to draw the viewer deep down the rabbit hole. Alice, played by Tina Uyeno, alternates regularly between practiced and polished wonder, contempt, and gladness, all delivered with singsong intonation. She

The trick to why television and movies are so popular, so prevalent, so everyday, has to do with catharsis. The average person can experience the world without ever leaving the couch. We believe what we see on the screen enough to have physical reactions: an increase in heart rate, an outburst of laughter, the welling of tears in our eyes. Theatre, with its obviously constructed nature, isn’t able to match the believability of film, no matter how hard a production may try. This could be seen as a limitation, but only if the object of a play is to be as “real” as what’s on screen. A better objective might be to play with the very idea of realness, believability, and the human desire for catharsis. This is what Uncle Vanya and Zombies does. The play is actually a play within the frame of a reality TV show within the frame of a theatre within the frame of a Zombie-infested version of O‘ahu. The contestants are acting in Chekhov’s classic in the hopes of winning a ticket to the main