This Christmas season, Ferndale Rep did The Party, an adaptation of the Mad Hatter scene in "Alice," written by Vikki Young, as their annual school matinee. It's described as teaching "the importance of manners," and manners certainly were central to "Alice", even when they were being dissected and demolished.

For its Christmas show, Dell'Arte dramatized a famous Lewis Carroll nonsense verse narrative, "The Hunting of the Snark." I didn't see the Ferndale show, but I did see one performance of this one, at the Van Duzer Theatre.

 The costumes (by Lydia Foreman) and set (by Jody Sekas) were terrific, and the ensemble of actors was first rate. In retrospect, I wished I'd seen it in a smaller venue (or that I'd been closer to the stage), because that kind of intimacy with the characters may have compensated for the lack of engagement I felt, which I attribute to the script and its approach.

Ever since then I've been trying to figure out why I wasn't crazy about this show. There wasn't much of a story, so while many parts were funny--characters, costumes, bits--there wasn't enough to either carry it along or give it any substance. This show tried to more or less literally translate the poem into action, though what makes it a funny and engaging nonsense poem isn't the action. It's most often the language (which this show did try to feature) and sometimes the incongruities on the page (like the blank nautical map) that don't quite have the same impact on stage. Of course, other elements have more impact--like seeing the costumes and masks move and interact. But verse can carry itself forward with rhythm and clever surprises. That's harder to sustain on stage.

Also the poem is very English, and very much a product of its time. Some of the referents are so obsolete as to be incomprehensible, like "bathing-machine," and even some of the key images in the refrain, so familiar to children of Carroll's time, are remote from the experience of today's children, or unknown:

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

One reason the Disney film succeeds (it seems to me) is that it successfully suggests Alice's English late 19th century world. So many of Carroll's nonsense verses are based on real verses that well brought-up children of Alice's era were expected to memorize and recite. The Disney film suggests this very economically, and can be a way into the book itself on that score (as it was, I believe, for me as a child.) But out of context, even some of the characters in "Snark" may be incomprehensible to children and others of today.

But even though unknown words and unfamiliar character types can still be funny, nonsense depends on contrast with sense, and successful caricatures and parodies of character types depends on knowing what the characters are supposed to be like, and how they are supposed to behave. Much depends on knowing these character types, especially when they are taking themselves very seriously, just as the vaudeville antics of the Marx Brothers (for example) often depends on some idea of what doctors, lawyers and professors, or down on their luck con men, are supposed to be like. At least before the Marx Brothers themselves became icons. And if you don't know from experience what they're like, you should get some idea from how they are portrayed. If they are only ridiculous, they lose the contrast.

It may be that the rigidity of categories and stereotypes is important--if not essential--to nonsense. What makes it nonsense is the nonsensical person or action (or combination of words) is playing it absolutely straight. Since the English upper class was notoriously stuffy, and yet also known for harboring eccentrics who embody living nonsense to some degree, the way is prepared for the kind of nonsense that Carroll creates. Clowning (which probably began as parodying the stereotype of the country bumpkin) and physical comedy, plus masks and costumes can do this, but it can also go too far into itself.

What does work, and I imagine especially for children, is that Carroll creates likeable characters that do translate to stage and screen. So the characters the actors create can delight on their own, at least for awhile. I guess what I am missing is the other layer, especially since in this case the literal story is not very interesting.

The literalization of a fanciful tale, while always tempting, can also have hidden dangers. Seeing imagined figures in brilliantly costumed splendor can be great fun. But seeing the imagined action acted out is perhaps something else.

For example, in the play as in the poem we're told that there is a kind of Snark called a Boojum, which causes the person who captures it to vanish. And in the play as in the poem, the Baker finds a Snark and vanishes, "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see." (According to Carroll, this last line of the poem was the first that came to him, out of the blue while he was walking.)

But reading the lines has quite a different effect than seeing the action. In the poem, the Baker vanishes, and that's the end. In the play, the Baker essentially dies, and the other characters react to that. That's a big difference in mood and in the kind of play it is, and whether the death is appropriate or appropriately handled become questions. It's not nonsense anymore.

All of this may itself be nonsense. Many people saw the show and it seems most enjoyed it thoroughly. Carroll was creating nonsense for children, so it was about the authoritative inconsistencies of adults, but also about those strange creatures called words and numbers, as well as about fantasies responding to the natural world and the world of dreams. Perhaps this approach works for its primary audience, the children in the dark.