Theater: Into a Laughing Hell

There is no drug quite so powerful as the human imagination—and Lewis Carroll took quite a heady draught before he followed Alice down the rabbit hole. A group of off-Broadway players under the direction of Andre Gregory have now dramatized Alice in Wonderland, and the trip that results is an exciting, absorbing, vertiginous descent into a laughing hell.

The familiar and beloved Alice is here, looking like a slightly tattered Tenniel illustration, and the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts, and the Cheshire Cat—all the fond friends of generations of children. But...