Peter and Alice
The portrayal of Carroll and Liddell in the play is very loosely inspired by Anne Clarke's 1981 biography The Real Alice.The original production was directed by Michael Grandage, staged at the Noël Coward Theatre in London in March 2013.Michael Billington in The Guardian wrote: "It's not a play that shocks or startles by its insights, but the reward lies in watching Dench and Whishaw recreate the agony and the ecstasy of inherited fame.".[3] Libby Purves in The Times wrote "A meeting of two childhood muses, played by Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, breaks your heart open".Henry Hitchings in The Evening Standard wrote: "this is a piece that uses lush language to compensate for its lack of real dynamism".