Alice & Other Heroes??

I attended this show last night, expecting something entirely...different.

It was definitely avant-garde and edgy. So edgy that I felt like crawling out of my skin by the end of it. With music by The Longest Night Ensemble, the show was basically the full band playing onstage to film shorts. The shorts were book-ended by a whacked-out Alice in Wonderland story, so it went like, Alice, short, short, Alice, short short, Alice.

Let me tell you, the music was all very high-toned and on the thin side of register, so it was very eerie. The film shorts were nothing short of the creepiest interpretation of Alice in Wonderland that I have ever seen. I felt edgy and incredibly tense watching it. The sounds in the shorts are over-emphasized, so the taxidermied rabbit that dons a waist-coat and top hat 'screeeekkss' across the screen with every stiff artificial hop. He has creepy fake eyes and snaps his taxidermied teeth together at little Alice. Eugh.

Alice also gets chased by various animal skulls of every description wearing santa-type hats and eyeballs. Miniature coyote skulls pop out of chicken eggs as if hatching. It is all so insanely creepy that I just felt very unsettled the whole time.

It is bizarre and disturbing. There was also a short that echoed some very disturbing themes, like God=Dog that had a woman writhing in a bed, then clutching a doorframe frantically watching some bored looking huskies on a dog tie. I got some bad vibes off that short, that's for sure.

We came out of the theatre feeling like we were ready to jump out of our skin, and I told my friend, "I'm glad I was a little buzzed, and not high. My skin would be crawling if I was!" (Note: I do not smoke pot, and I was not driving that night. Hence the allowable buzz)

It was just... well. Eerie.