The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School invest themselves gallantly in this first-anywhere musical theatre premiere. The music by James Merillat in Wonderland High is challenging and stage-quality, with several clever numbers, cleverly staged. The Players workshopped some of this material last year, according to Billy Dragoo, who runs the AHS program, and they've delivered on his promise to Merillat to stage the piece when he finished it.
The book, by Merillat and Jesse Johnson, doesn't live up to the music. It's a confused effort to meld a stereotypical "new kid in high school" story with Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. An occasional jokey reference comes through -- the Tweedle sisters are really dumb, for instance -- but most of the time it doesn't connect. The new arrival at Wonderland High is Arthur (Andrew Murray), son of the new English teacher Dr. Bloom (??). Alice Little (Kaylie DeLauri) is already in Wonderland, reigning witlessly as head cheerleader and girlfriend to the dumb leading football player Paul (Corbin Chase). New arrival Arthur gets a bloody nose from the jealous jock, then covers up cheating by Alice and her cronies, not fooling his teacher-father Dr. Bloom (Blake Nixon) for a moment. That sacrifice awakens Alice's consciousness, showing her it's okay to have your own friends and actually to be smart rather than popular. "Bad girl" Alicia (cf., the Red Queen) engineers a coup, taking over as girlfriend to the football player. Alicia's arrant manipulation of voting for homecoming king and queen rouses the citizenry to reject traditional ballot stuffing. There's some confused stuff about a time capsule and about the school store.
The smart and savvy Red Dragons aren't learning any lesson from the predictable moralizing of this concoction. It's a cautionary tale invented by some old guy, one that might best be aimed at junior high students wondering about the big, bad world of high school pressures.
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