U.P.I.
June 23, 1982
Lewis Carroll Led Two Lives: So Did Alfred Nobbs
By GLENNE CURRIE, UPI Lively Arts Editor
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was was a stammering mathematician who was happiest when he was telling fantastic stories to little girls as Lewis Carroll; Alfred Nobbs was a woman forced by 19th century society to live and die as a man.
They are the subjects of two new Off Broadway plays, though ''The Singular Life of Alfred Nobbs'' is by far the better work...
***
''Looking-Glass,'' which opened at the Entermedia Theater June 14, seemingly with an eventual Broadway transfer in mind, purportedly shows where the creator of ''Alice in Wonderland,'' ''Alice Through the Looking Glass'' and ''The Hunting of the Snark'' got his inspiration. It takes liberties with the known facts, and makes no attempt to explain Dodgson's psychology.
It starts entertainingly enough, with Dodgson leaving home and younger siblings reluctantly to go to Oxford. There he is diffident and stammers in the presence of adults, but talks up a storm with young Alice Liddell and her sisters. He makes up ''Alice in Wonderland'' to entertain Alice, and takes photographs of her, both clothed and unclothed, supposedly in all innocence.
When Alice's mother sees the photographs, she assumes that he is the worst sort of pervert and bans further contact. The bitter Dodgson publishes the books under a nom-de-plume fashioned from the Latin equivalents of his Christian names, and settles down to an anonymous existence as a mathematics and logic lecturer for the next quarter-century.
There are some clever scenes, where Dodgson's imagination turns his friends and acquaintances into his famous characters. But the play is disjointed and goes nowhere and avoids the main question of Dodgson-Carroll's psychology.
There is some good acting by John Vickery as Dodgson, Tara Kennedy as Alice, Nicholas Hormann and Richard Peterson as undergraduates, Mitchell Steven Tebo as Dodgson's rival and nemesis, and Innes-Fergus McDade as a governess who mistakes Dodgson's intentions.
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