School love versus OGE: How did the musical “Alice in Wonderland” with Anna Peresild come about?

Today in Russia the most spectacular project of the year is released – the musical “Alice in Wonderland” starring Anna Peresild. The Fashion Vibes editors attended the closed-door gala on October 20, attended by many industry and showbiz stars. Read more about the guests and red carpet highlights in our gossip column. We also recommend reading the interview with Ira Gorbacheva and Paulina Andreeva, who played the roles of the Queen of Wonderland and the Duchess. In the meantime, let’s explain how the film came to be.

What awaits us is not just a film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s book of the same name, but an original story: Once upon a time, Vladimir Vysotsky, together with theater director Oleg Gerasimov, prepared a libretto for a radio play based on it. Considering that the songs were ultimately written for Soviet audiences, director Yuri Khmelnitsky (“Ice 3”) and screenwriter Karina Chuvikova (“Chemistry Between Us”) made changes that would bring it to our time.

In the new version, Alice “changes her citizenship from British to Russian”. Anna Peresild is very sincere and natural in her role as 15-year-old Moscow schoolgirl Alice. He does not play a Carroll hero – the name was chosen by his parents, who loved this fairy tale and staged home performances based on it.

In general, the dynamics of the narrative are fascinating from the first minutes, although in some places the “home” scenes with songs smell of advertising for furniture and household goods, but then Alice is late for school and the street begins to move. Random passersby, leaflet distributors, construction workers repairing the road, a utility worker, and soon teachers and classmates join in dancing. This is both unusual and intriguing. Even if the dance numbers and songs are not remembered, this format allows you to look at our daily lives from a completely different perspective. The producers of the series made the field “talk”.

Like Zhora Kryzhovnikov’s recent “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” the new “Alice” is a musical, a forgotten genre that has gained popularity both here and abroad in the past few years. Overall, the musical aspires to Broadway, reminiscent of Tim Minchin’s Matilda, where the story also revolves around a schoolgirl.

The street dance picture is fascinating until Alice arrives at school. Even though the plot centers on teenagers, the story is not necessarily aimed at children, which falls into the “family movie” category. Let’s also remember the success of Stranger Things, where the main characters are children and teenagers. Many of the teachers’ dialogues are extremely caricatured, as if they were taken from Soviet jokes. Jokes such as “A mid-center is a mouse that runs around corners and divides the corner in half” make those who say them feel ashamed, even if they are teachers (Kristina Babushkina, Ilya Lykov).

The attempt to reach both adult and teenage audiences at the same time made many scenes artificial, and it is a shame that any Russian fantasy turns into a theatrical comedy. Still, Burton’s “Alice” was well received by adults and children alike. Except for Alice, all classmates, including the characters Polina Gukhman, Artem Koshman and Oleg Savostyuk, display nervous and unnatural behavior. It is still strange that modern young people sing something in the Soviet theatrical style.

But “Alice” showed how much we miss school love, which is more important than any OGE. All these descriptions of the relationship between classmates who seem serious at the moment make you involuntarily smile.

Since Alice failed her midterm, she can’t spend time with her friends anymore, and Crush invites her out. At home, often understanding parents express their dissatisfaction and even argue over different approaches to education. And of course, like any drama queen (we’re all that age), the heroine runs away to the park, away from everyone else, only to meet a strange man with rabbit teeth who steals her watch. The section with the slide in the playground that opens the way to Wonderland for the hero and his love interest can be considered a blessing. This is where the fun begins because this time the same handsome boy from school goes after Alice.

In general, the romantic side is the main trump card of the musical film. Finally, with Anna Peresild’s performance, we could see in Alice not an eternal girl, but a girl in love.

And the protagonist’s parents were at the center of events, although, as we know, they were originally completely outside the scope of the story. Here their relationship develops in two worlds: real and magical.

In Wonderland, everything is exactly the opposite: seemingly familiar faces, but they behave completely differently. Her treacherous friend appears as a bat, her bully boyfriend as a thug, the teacher as a Cat, and the formidable school principal, played by Paulina Andreeva, as an imperious Duchess. Just meeting the Queen and the Mad Hatter, played by Ira Gorbacheva and Milos Bikovic, sheds new light on their real-life relationship as mother and father.

It was interesting to watch the crazy duet of the Queen of Wonderland and the Duchess. Their political disagreements reveal the truth about the eternal ruler in a land where time stands still. Although the latter is not destined to bring the wind of change to his world, time flies forward.

Source: People Talk