Fallout 76's theatre troupe performed a bloody version of Alice In Wonderland
"Off with their heads!" says the bloodthirsty Vault dweller
For all of Fallout 76’s faults, the multiplayer shooter has fostered one of the most interesting communities in any game, leading to fun mutations such as the theatre company experimenting with performance art in-game. The Wasteland Theatre Company previously tackled Shakespeare and A Christmas Carol, and they've now reconvened with a post-apocalyptic performance of Alice In Wonderland, appropriately adapted as Alice In The Wasteland.
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is a famously dream-like, nonsensical children’s book, and it’s been adapted so many times it’s no wonder the Fallout 76 troupe have set their eyes on it. Their digital performance is specifically adapting Alice Gerstenberg’s own 1915 stage version, rather than Lewis Carroll’s original books. I recently discovered that Lewis Carroll was actually the pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the politically conservative mathematician. Now I simply want to time-travel back to Dodgson, hold up a laptop playing Alice in Fallout 76, and watch his brain explode. Maybe he’ll just be amused.
Anyway, this Fallout 76 performance follows Alice from the confines of her Vault, out into the dreaded Wastelands. The original book was about Alice eating magic mushrooms and dealing with the trippy things that followed thereafter, and this production holds onto that weirdness, all while reworking the trip with Fallout clothes. Tweedle Dee and Dum, for instance, are now Bottle and Cappy. And the iconic Tea Party is now the Chems Den (chems meaning chemicals, chemicals meaning drugs.)
I only skimmed through a part of the play, but it seems to retain the source material’s weirdness. Alice’s cloudy curiosity turns into bloody confidence, the production design is full of bold colours, and some of the dialogue has a sort of odd syntax that’s hard to decipher. Is it nonsense? Or is it so profound, it's hard to make sense-full? Hmmm.
The show was held “live” in-game, streamed on the United Wastelanders Network Twitch account, and posted in full on YouTube. It’s worth a look if you were into The Wasteland Theatre Company’s last few productions, or if you just enjoy Alice In Wonderland stuff.