Pretty vacant

Alice is at it again. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2011 three-act ballet began another sell-out run at Covent Garden last week. It’s a joy to look at and packed with featured roles that show off the Royal Ballet’s strength in depth. If only it weren’t such a bore: thinly written characters; anodyne choreography and zero dramatic tension.

To be fair, the episodic dream logic of the original doesn’t make for a coherent or involving narrative. Wheeldon and his scenarist, Nicholas Wright, have done their best to correct for this by tacking on a Wizard of Oz-style prologue in which the Caterpillar, Dormouse et al. are human guests at an Oxford tea party. Carroll’s heroine becomes a teenager (and thus eligible for romantic duets), and a modern-day epilogue has been added to reunite her with the Knave of Hearts. But this perfunctory happy ending doesn’t engage us and Joby Talbot’s brassy, percussive score can’t fill the emotional gaps.