THIS is an imaginative updating of the classic Lewis Carroll story Alice In Wonderland, written for the stage by Laura Wade.

Alice is a contemporary 12-year-old girl, with a mobile phone, a snappish attitude, and a penchant for inserting the word “bloody”

into her speech.

Her older brother has died and the opening scene shows family and friends at the uncomfortable funeral wake: “Lovely service...”, “Lovely flowers...”, and a distraught Alice who hasn’t left the house for two weeks.

Comforted by her grieving parents – convincingly played by Jasper MacDermot and Hannah Waterfall – Alice watches TV footage of her brother and starts to fall apart.

From out of an armchair – superb staging! – appears the traditional White Rabbit, beautifully played by Iona Johnson, and the madness begins. Wonderland has a border control with sensibly nonsensical questions: “Has anyone else packed your suitcase?” and all the other terrorist-driven precautions we have to deal with nowadays.

All the usual suspects are here: the Cheshire Cat, the Dormouse, the Mad Hatter (even performing madly in the interval bar), Humpty Dumpty – assuredly performed by Oliver Hopkins – and the surreal nonsense can be enjoyed on different age-related levels.

As the upset, bewildered, and eventually recovered Alice, Megan Slark, is on stage she, like many of these young actors, has a commanding presence.

With delicious symmetry, there are 65 talented performers in this latest Salisbury Playhouse Stage ’65 production.

Alice runs until Saturday.