The Heart of Alice By Heart (with exclusive content from Steven Sater)
Steven Sater and Felicia Fitzpatrick talking about Alice By Heart at the Strand Bookstore on Friday, Feb. 7
“The secret is to find the wonder in the life you’re living. Not to pretend to live somewhere else.”
Like the White Rabbit in Wonderland, I feel like I’m always running late on these posts. Although in my defense it’s been a mad, mad week.
Since Friday, when I saw the delightful Steven Sater talk about and read an excerpt of his lovely book, Alice By Heart, adapted from the musical of the same name, I’ve also seen (well, seeing one tonight) two brilliant performers at 54 Below and two mind-blowing shows (keep an eye out for those posts). So yea, I’ve kind of fallen down the theatre hole this week.
But now I’m back, and I’ve got a few things to say about Alice By Heart (full disclosure, I still haven’t had time to read the book, but I did see the musical at the MCC early last year and I’m super excited to finally read it as soon as I have a few hours to focus).
First things first, I loved the musical.
I’ve always been one of Alice’s most ardent admirers. The whimsy of Wonderland could cheer even my darkest days and I truly took to heart the lesson of believing in the impossible and growing and changing as the world around me called for it.
So when I heard that there was this new, beautiful, sad (I like sad -- Falsettos and Sweeney Todd are my all-time favourite musicals) musical by the same geniuses who brought us Spring Awakening, I was eager to see it. Going to see Alice By Heart even beat out the other off-Broadway musical I desperately wanted to see that closed at the same time (We Are the Tigers, cuz I also love pop music and cheerleaders - fantastically fun cast album if anyone is interested).
So I went with my friend and I was enthralled. I was enchanted. I was transported.
The story goes like this: Young teenager Alice Spencer is sheltering in a London tube station during the blitz with a bunch of other displaced young people when her childhood best friend and first love Alfred is brought in. Spoiler alert: Alfred is dying of Tuberculosis. So Alice, who is struggling with loss and grief and growing up, escapes into her favourite book, Alice in Wonderland, which she has memorized. The musical follows her as she grows and grieves and learns to say goodbye.
It got hammered by the New York Times critics, but as per usual, I disagree with the critics.
It doesn’t hurt that the cast, feat. Molly Gordon, Colton Ryan, Wes Taylor, Kim Blanck, Noah Galvin, Andrew Kober, Grace McLean and Heath Saunders, among others, were excellent. Or that the choreography by Jeff and Rick Kuperman was fresh and organic. Or that the costumes were brilliant made out of materials that looked like they came straight out of the Blitz. Or that the cast album brings me so perfectly back to those moments in the musical and often brings me to tears. Or...or...or…
I could go on, but then I’ll never get to Friday’s book reading.
Steven Sater, who wrote the lyrics and the book for the musical, adapted it into a young adult novel.
“Books really were my world,” Sater said, noting his unusual childhood plagued with severe asthma which led to utter isolation and a dearth of medical professionals in this youth. “I wanted to write a show about a book. About how much a book can mean. So it was never just adapting it. It was always about what this book meant to someone else.”
It’s obvious this man loves books. Sitting in the Strand’s Rare Book room (one of my favourite places), he often referenced specific books or his general love of books, even revealing that Marcel Proust is his favourite author.
Someone writing about Proust described what he does with remembering and forgetting as Penelope putting off suitors while waiting for Odysseus to return to her, weaving and unweaving. And although he at first thought the idea of adapting this musical based on a book back into a book, he soon discovered all the ways in which it could work.
“A book in conversation with the Alice books, but also all these other books that have meant so much to me throughout my life,” he said. “So this book is kind of built on books. I want(ed) to create a book, like a web, out of all the books I don’t want to forget.”
As for the book and musical’s blitz setting...well, even that seemed relevant to Sater.
“We’re living in such a dark chaotic time of mock trials...it just seemed timely,” he said. “In a time of war, look at the world today and the devaluation of culture. I wanted to create a book that can be full of what it means to have an education as a young person. What was important to all of us in creating the show was to affirm the power of the imagination in dark and chaotic times. So as not to say we are in ... fantastically going to some other place. It was about what can the imagination perform in the real world where we are.”
Then, to top off this fantastic evening in one of my favourite New York haunts, Krysta Rodriguez and Alex Boniello performed the song “Afternoon” with Duncan playing the guitar. If I didn’t love them before (which I did, I really did), I certainly loved them at that moment, for that afternoon.
After everyone got their books signed and took photos, I had about two minutes to interview Steven. Here’s what he had to say:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SATER
What do you hope people connect with most?
I hope people recognise the power. I want to reignite this sense of wonder and belief in the power of imagination in such dark chaotic times.
What is one pivotal moment in the book that you connect with and find really relevant today?
The struggle to overcome just by going on and through finding sustenance in the stories we love.
What has been the best part of your journey with Alice?
There’s so many moments. Sitting with Duncan in my home while he played songs and we broke out in tears, sitting in the theatre hearing the cast sing them, all the hours spent in my home working on the book moved by what I wrote in the book and then people experiencing the book. It’s been Beautiful.
