AllMovie

Alice at the Palace deserves points for originality and for taking a familiar fairy tale and finding a new way of looking at it. The conceit behind the production is that Alice's well-known adventures are taking place essentially as part of a Victorian music hall performance. It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately creator Elizabeth Swados doesn't really know what to do with it. As a result, Alice ends up being a series of disconnected musical numbers and scenes with no real point. Rather than complimenting the source's episodic nature, this makes the piece much more episodic with no pay-off. Worse, it robs the Alice stories of any real humanity, as the characters (including Alice) are totally removed from their context and given no depth or growth of any kind. This might have been more acceptable if Swados had supplied an entrancing score that could give life to the characters, but, with very few exceptions, the music ranges between tuneless and annoying. (It's also often wildly inappropriate in style for the music hall setting -- an intentional choice, but one that simply doesn't work.) Fortunately, Alice is blessed with a superior cast, starting with the totally engaging Meryl Streep. Few other actresses could do as much with so little, and she makes the experience worth watching, especially for those who are unaware of her considerable musical gifts. There's also fine support from the likes of Mark Linn Baker, Michael Jeter, and Deborah Rush, with special credit going to Debbie Allen's lively Queen of Hearts. Though the cast can't make this Alice great, they do manage to cover over a great deal of its shortcomings.