Based on Lewis Carroll’s famous tales of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, Helen Gomm’s script (complete with Theo’s original musical numbers) was an ideal platform for West Meon Youth Theatre to develop their performance skills.

Mary Dawson skilfully directed the large cast of seven to 13-year-olds, ensuring lovely characterisations, good energy levels, lots of smiling faces, visual humour, great use of available space and excellent diction from the youngsters. Among the large, inexperienced ensemble, there were some performances showing great potential, stage presence and musicality, including, but not exclusively, Grace Longman, Jessica Willson, James Forsyth, Rachel Forsyth, Abby Edwards, Gabriel Jacobs, Hannah Willcock, Emma Dobson and Liam Gray.

Fi Beardall’s cleverly-designed and boldly-painted pop-up storybook scenery combined with colourful costumes to create a magical fantasy world. This may not have been perfect for the purists, but it captivated the audience, young and old alike, and was a lot of fun.