July-December 2010 Season
BOOJUM!: Post your review
November 16 - December 19
Storefront Theater
“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see,” sets the stage for this fun-filled romp through the mind of writer Lewis Carroll. Part existential musical theatre and part fantasy adventure story, this riff on Carroll’s epic poem ”The Hunting of the Snark” examines the psychological life of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the man behind the Lewis Carroll pen name. As his poem warns, “catching Snarks is all well and good, but if your Snark is a Boojum, you will softly and suddenly vanish away.” But while the hunting party moves towards its fateful catch, they discover with Carroll and his Alice that Nothing is quite what it seems. Caffeine Theatre and Chicago Opera Vanguard collaborate on the US stage premiere of this hit Australian musical.
View photos by John W. Sisson, Jr.
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Crew Review
By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director
Cora’s protest sign, Carl’s pool cue, and Errol’s parasol are important weapons for these characters.
In Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” the Snark-Hunting Crew has ten members. Boojum! writers Peter Wesley-Smith and Martin Wesley-Smith have whittled the Crew down to eight. While the Bonnet-Maker and the Broker missed the cut, each of the remaining crew members has been given a name and some fascinating cultural baggage. Director Jimmy McDermott, costume designer Philip Dawkins, and Props Designer Jessica Rosenlieb collaborated on creating distinctive looks for each crew member, drawing on the information provided by Carroll’s poem and the Wesley-Smiths’ libretto.
Part of McDermott’s vision for the crew members’ gear was that it should simultaneously convey character and have the potential to be weaponized in order to help fight the Snark. The most important weapons against the Snark are repeated in several stanzas of the poem as follows:
“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.”
These weapons (particularly thimbles, forks, railway-shares, smiles, and soap) are present in Boojum! and are supplemented by others that have significance for each individual crew member’s occupation, national origin, or personal idiosyncrasies.
Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves
By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director
Much like the characters of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell is present in two incarnations in Boojum! Alice, as a child, questions Dodgson and Carroll about the meaning of “The Hunting of the Snark”. The grown-up Mrs. Hargreaves joins in the Snark Hunt and shares her memories of Dodgson, and how they grew apart as she became an adult.
Born May 4, 1852, the fourth of ten children, Alice Pleasance Liddell is best known for having asked Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to tell her a story. This happened while Alice, Lorina, and Edith Liddell were in a rowboat with Dodgson and Reverend Robinson Duckworth on July 4, 1852. Duckworth was rowing. Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down, and he presented her with a manuscript entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which was later revised and published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A sequel sent Alice through the Looking-Glass to play a chess game during which she crossed a brook to reach the eighth square and become a queen.
Alice was also a frequent photographic subject for Dodgson. The portrait of Alice as a beggar is perhaps the best-known photograph that Dodgson took.
In 1880, Alice Liddell married the wealthy Reginald Hargreaves, a cricket player. Two of their three sons were killed in WWI. The third son, Caryl, was apparently not named after Lewis Carroll. But Mrs. Hargreaves is said to have asked Lewis Carroll to be Caryl’s godfather and to have received no reply.
After Reginald Hargreaves died in 1926, Mrs. Hargreaves sold her copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at auction for over 15,000 pounds. She died in 1934. Her tombstone identifies her as “The ‘Alice’ in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/Lewis Carroll Biography
By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director
One major aspect of Boojum! is the relationship between the mild-mannered historical person Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and his larger than life alter-ego, Lewis Carroll. In some situations, particularly with his child-friends, Dodgson seems to have enjoyed using the name Lewis Carroll. But he was not interested in Carroll’s fame, and redirected all correspondence for Carroll to his publishers.
Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on January 27, 1832. His parents were first cousins: Charles Dodgson, a conservative Anglican clergyman, and Frances Lutwidge. Dodgson was deaf in one ear as a result of a childhood fever. He also had a stammer or stutter. In later life he suffered from migraines. There has also been speculation that he was epileptic.
Dodgson moved to Oxford in 1851, where he studied at Christ Church (his father’s former college). His knack for mathematics eventually earned him a Lectureship. His publications on mathematics focused primarily on Geometry and Formal Logic. There is an amusing anecdote about Queen Victoria asking him to send her a signed copy of his next book after she read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Dodgson is said to have obliged by sending her a copy of his next scholarly work: An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.
After publishing numerous poems and short stories, Dodgson first used the pseudonym Lewis Carroll in 1856. Dodgson met the Liddell family that same year, when Henry Liddell became the new Dean of Christ Church, and struck up a friendship with three of the girls: Lorina, Alice, and Edith. (Eight of the Liddell children survived childhood. 2 boys died as infants. Edith died at 22.)
Hunting the Snark
By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director
Boojum! is loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s mock epic poem “The Hunting of the Snark.” This poem, written in 1874 and published in 1876, details the adventures of a ragtag group of Snark-hunters who have set sail with the Bellman. Each member of the Crew has an occupation that beings with the letter “B.” Their world is inhabited by jubjub birds and bandersnatches, fabulous monsters that appear in Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky”.
Literary critics have variously interpreted the Snark Hunt as an allegory: it may represent the search for happiness, the search for monetary wealth, a failed business venture, or even a Hegelian philosopher’s quest for truth. Carroll famously rejected all interpretations of this poem, and of his other literary work. Having received an inquiry about the meaning of “The Hunting of the Snark,” he wrote back: “I’m very much afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them. So a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So whatever good meanings are in the book, I’m glad to accept as the meaning of the book.”
If you would like to read “The Hunting of the Snark” in its entirety, you can find it online HERE
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