A new Alice in Wonderland comes to the Canberra Theatre

Georgina Walker is excited about playing the title role in Alice in Wonderland, a classic story she remembers from her childhood.

"I'm 27 but now it's like I've never aged at all," she says.

Walker will will be playing the young girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantastic and bizarre world in the new Australian season of an international stage production based on Lewis Carroll's novel.

Alice, she says, represents the viewpoint of the audience in Wonderland - "It's all the about the reactions of Alice ... They [the audience] see the show through Alice's eyes. Alice embraces the peculiarities of it and the wondrous nature of it."

If Alice is able to accept all the weird and wonderful happenings, she says, the audience will also surrender to the magical nature of the proceedings while also feeling her sense of bemusement at much that happens.

She imagines Alice to be about nine or 10, a little girl who is quite polite and sensible, especially when confronted with some of the strange characters in Wonderland, including the irascible Queen of Hearts, the disappearing Cheshire Cat and the ever-late White Rabbit. Still, Alice is no pushover, Walker says.

"She's not afraid to disagree with them ...She's not afraid to question the ridiculousness."

But Alice is also a little girl, and by the time she gets to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party - with the March Hare and the Dormouse also in attendance - and something that sounds like fun is proposed, she's up for it.

"Even though the creatures are quite unusual, when they suggest playing a game she's 100 per cent there - 'let's do it!""

Walker, originally from the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, started at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School when she was 14, focusing on classical singing. When she graduated she went on to study musical theatre at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Since then has worked in Sydney and Melbourne with credits including a Sydney Opera House concert production of Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town in the role of Eileen and a Sydney Fringe Festival production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George as Dot, "my bucket list role".

She won't be singing here, though: this Alice is a straight play, not a musical, all the better to give full rein to Carroll's use of language and the colour and movement in the characters and production design, according to co-producer and co-adapter Ethan Walker (no relation to Georgina).

He also notes that this production, which has been presented in New York before coming to Australia, is multinational in its personnel besides being based on an English classic

"Our set designer, Zachary Lieberman is from Los Angeles, our graphic designer Yi Ling, is from Singapore and our Emmy Award-winning costume designer, Diana Eden, is from Canada. Throw these talented people in with our Australian director, Penny Farrow, and you already have an international group of people being united through the work of Lewis Carroll."

Illusionist Michael Boyd,who is producing the show with Walker, says most of the Australian cast of nine will be playing more than 100 different characters, who will be brought to life in both human and puppet form, although Walker will remain just Alice throughout.

In keeping with the topsy-turvy nature of Wonderland, and to add a touch of pantomime to the proceedings, there wil be a spot of gender-bending in the show.

"The Queen of Hearts is played by a man," Boyd says, "and the Mad Hatter by an elderly woman."

Boyd says the one-hour production will be performed in Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra and then go on to other cities including Sydney - and then, he hopes, to more international venues to take advantage of the worldwide appeal of Alice in Wonderland. with its familiar characters and classic set pieces.

"We've had interest in the West End."