What: Gerald Charles’ Alice in Wonderland, presented by Cape Town City Ballet
When: December 12-28, 2025
Where: Artscape, Cape Town
Bookings: Webtickets
Conceived and created by: Gerard and Stephen C Anderson
Additional choreography for this production:  Leusson Muniz and Abdul- Aagier Isaacs from Cape Town City Ballet.    

Gerald Charles’ Alice in Wonderland at Artscape, Cape Town, presented by Cape Town City Ballet, December 12-28, 2025, is a wow, mind-blowingly brilliant. It was conceived and created by Gerard and Stephen C Anderson (a theatre director).

I was blown away by this production. It is ballet-theatre – not just “a ballet”. Spoken word (fab script by Stephen C Anderson) is woven with the dance. It’s surreal, zany – Alice in mad-land – going beyond “wonderland”. This is Cape Town City Ballet in another realm. The dance is incredible – athletic, acrobatic – cirque – clown -mashed with classical vocabulary. Choreography by Gerald Charles is astonishing. Mardi gras meets ballet – utterly crazy. More of that with the bouncing balls caterpillar. Read on.

Besides Alice (actually there are multiple Alices – emblematic of us all being Alice) in period pinafores – there is no frilly-ness to this production. There is colour, but it is deeply saturated; set lit like paintings by Faheem Bardien. The costumes by David Pamplin are wacky and wonderful. It pings for me with a Salvador Dali aesthetic. Projection design by Kirsti Cumming is sometimes pretty – channelling Monet flowers, Jim Dine hearts (that is my interpretation, anyway) – and veers into an liminal underworld – with 3d gridded perspectives – sucking us into the landscape way on yonder.


“Dancing doors” (quoting Gerard Charles) are used as portals, entrances and exits, spaces. The doors are brilliantly configured and moved around by the dancers and actors.

Set design, originally by Stephanie Gerkens, adapted for this production by Birrie le Roux and Stefan Benade.

Gerald Charles hails from the UK. He is currently Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Dance in London. From what I gather, he created this ballet 20 years ago but this is the first time that CTCB is presenting it – so as mentioned the set has been adapted for this production and costumes – by a Cape Town designer and lighting and projection design by our own.

And there is more – Gerard Bester worked on additional choreography with Leusson Muniz and Abdul-Aagier Isaacs from Cape Town City Ballet. So here he is bringing his acclaimed ballet to Cape Town and inviting CTCB artists to contribute to shaping the production now in 2025. I don’t know which pieces that they contributed to but I want to single out a scene. If you don’t want to know, skip this paragraph. Stability balls (like the ones used in Pilates) are used in the scene where Alice encounters the caterpillar. The balls form the body and are thrown and juggled by the dancers and they manage to still nail ballet moves, conjuring up the graceful slithering creature. It is very Kafkaesque. It pings for me in relation to Kafka’s story (unfinished), Blumfield, an Elderly Bachelor in which Blumfield dodges bouncing balls – dicing with them – trying to catch them. This scene is extraordinary – a ballet in its own right.

Another absolute stand-out scene is when Alice tumbles down the dark rabbit hole and when her tears form a lake. I am not going to production spoil. This is dance theatre par excellence.

A couple of shout outs from me: Amazing to see Gregan Aherin on stage again. I was bowled over by his performance at the Masque Theatre South Africa in Little Shop of Horrors (August 2025), playing Seymour, opposite Kay Mosiane as Audrey and here he is in Alice, as beguiling narrator, marshal, voyeur, MC, shaman. Fabulous.

A shout out to the adorable children who are in this ballet – 30 per performance. Seven were part of the first production twenty years ago. 90 kids are getting the opportunity to be part of this ballet, with alternating casts.

I loved this ballet. I want to go again, if there is time as there is so much to process that one viewing is not enough. Bravo CTCB, Gerard Charles, the SA creative team and the company.


Alice is fun and very mad. We know that we are all mad, so go and embrace madness. There is a lot of humour – within the darkness – and laughter, a terrific script with hilarious interludes.

✳ Featured image by Oscar O’Ryan. Supplied.