Alice was beautifully portrayed by Claudia Lowe, an up and coming star in the local thespian firmament. By turns sad, funny, curious and querulous, she danced and twirled her way amid the gallimaufry of peculiar creatures. Her theme song, 'Little Girl Lost,' tenderly woven through the fabric of the play, was a moving counterpoint to the madness.

The characters tumbled onto the stage in a riot of colour and noise: Michael Berkley's wonderful purplehatted Mad Hatter and Alan Milne's equally splendid March Hare, ably assisted by Luke Graham as the Dormouse; the deliciously plump oysters, Les Morley's superb weeping bewhiskered Walrus and Margaret Morris' Carpenter, complete with funky blond wig; the gloriously
colourful, bellicose 'bros', Dum and Dee, played with such zest by Amy Bugler and Beth Mitchell; Echo Irving's haughty Duchess, Rebecca Bryce's eerily smiling Cheshire Cat and Martha Graham's fabulously loud and bad-tempered Cook.

With scarcely time to draw breath, we met the lugubrious Mock Turtle, ably played by an exceptionally verdant David Walker, and his sometime companion, the Gryphon, a superb performance by Mark Halper, capering and screeching his acrobatic way through the famous
Quadrille. Two sweet little Lobsters, clad in orange and good enough to eat, completed the set.

The Queen of Hearts was brilliantly acted by Rachel Walker. Like some latter-day Punk Rocker, she tottered menacingly on her formidable 6” red stilettos, threatening all and sundry with a winning combination of voice and the imperious upper slopes of her black basque - and was as capricious and arbitrary as you could wish.

Her helpmeet, the King of Hearts, a lovely lisping performance from Mark Bullen, quivered cravenly before her, while their offspring was played with suitably surly teenage attitude by Louis Smith.

Who else? Jodie Fowkes (the White Rabbit), Simon Medd (the Caterpillar), Pauline Jefferies (the
Bottle) and a backup cast of Drama Club stalwarts went at it with gusto.

The Youth Drama children (too numerous to name) were by turns oysters, rabbits, flowers and playing cards. The allowances one might expect to make for child performers were utterly superfluous, so confident and professional were their singing, dancing and acting.

The colourful imaginative costumes were created by a team led by Julie Kingcott, and the staging, lighting, and special effects were the work of an efficient crew headed by her husband Richard. The scenery was the collective effort of a gang fronted by Jim and Heather Swords. Doors, trees, mushrooms and flowers came alive and danced about in swirling ultra- violet light.

The delightful original songs were the work of Rachel Walker and Paul Martin. Paul also wrote and
performed all the incidental music and sound effects on keyboards and trombone, aided by James Kilminster on saxes and clarinets.

Above all this was a seamless, and quite clearly joyful, collaboration between two groups with a wide range of age and experience, and one that left audiences thrilled and weak from applause.