IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON begins at the end as 82 year-old Alice Liddell Hargreaves lays dying. The young Alice who generations followed down the rabbit hole, and through the looking glass, had long ago faded away, and the once bright and whimsical little girl who inspired and immortal children's classic had grown cold and detached, her sunny disposition lost in the chiaroscuro of disappointment and adulthood as Wonderlanad melted into the shadows. Then her dear, long dead friend Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, reappears to take her back once more to Wonderland, where she confronts her failures and disappointments and reclaims her child-self before letting go to spend eternity with her friend in Wonderland.

 

All the Wonderland characters are here, some of them representing people from Alice Hargreaves' past: her mother, Lina Liddell, appears as the ferocious Queen of Hearts and the bossy Red Queen; the two sons she lost to WWI appear as Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll appears as himself, and as various Wonderland and Looking Glass characters, including the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the White Knight.