A 1982 Broadway stage performance of Alice in Wonderland was telecast on PBS's Great Performances in 1983.[1] Directed by Kirk Browning, it was produced by PBS affiliate WNET in New York. Black-and-white papier-mâché costumes aimed to re-create the book's original artwork by John Tenniel.[2]
The production was a revival of actress-director Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus's famous 1932 stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novel. It had been presented on Broadway in 1982 with Ms. Burton in the lead, but with an otherwise different cast featuring the Mirror Repertory Company.[3] The videotaping was not made in a theatre with a live audience, but in a television studio, much as the 1960 version of Peter Pan had been years before.
The 1983 TV adaptation of the stage production was not the first. It had previously been telecast in 1955 by NBC, as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.[5]
