BY CHARLI BATTERSBY | There are quite a few hip places clustered together in Bushwick, so that a dedicated adventurer could plan out an evening of carefully-timed venue-hoping. Have a few drinks at the photogenic bar, hit the cool cabaret for an irreverent vaudeville act, then off to the roller rink, and trust that there’ll HAVE to be semi-naked rollerskaters doing a burlesque show on wheels. But, for the final weekend of June 2025’s Pride Month, two of Bushwick’s hippest establishments partnered up for an evening of burlesque, cabaret, roller skating, and dance.

Company XIV was doing a Sunday evening performance of their Alice In Wonderland-inspired burlesque show, Queen of Hearts–and a mere two blocks away, Xandadu Roller Arts was ready to host the audience and performers for a VIP afterparty. Of course, they called this event Wonderlanadu.

The full title of the event was Wonderlanadu Pride Skate, which was scheduled so that people attending June 29’s NYC Pride March in Manhattan could make it out to Brooklyn just in time to see Queen of Hearts at Theatre XIV, then go rollerskating for a couple of hours, and be home in bed in time to get up for work on Monday morning.

Queen of Hearts is not an attempt at directly adapting Lewis Carroll’s books. Alice and her adventures have been re-imagined, parodied, and subverted so much that one can hardly expect a faithful adaption, especially from a burlesque troupe tackling a whimsical children’s tale.

The Alice books are nonetheless filled with intentional nonsense that is readily converted to absurdist burlesque, including song and dance numbers like the Lobster Quadrille. Yes, the cast managed to look hot in their lobster outfits. Queen of Hearts takes loose inspiration from Alice’s rogues gallery of enemies, companions, and storybook playmates–giving them sexy, often gender-bending, interpretations.

Each performer has a unique  burlesque, vaudeville, and/or circus style of performance that thematically blends with Lewis Carrol’s work. There is a slinky ballerina as the Cheshire Cat; an aerialist in a mermaid tail dangling from an anchor over Alice’s sea of giant tears; an equilibrist walks across “Drink Me” bottles in high heels while stripping out of her rhinestone-encrusted corset. 

Some of these interpretations will take a moment for audiences to make a thematic connection: The croquet flamingo was depicted by a hula hoop artist, but the visual metaphor was complete by the time she spread out all of her hoops and fluttered them as giant pink wings. The caterpillar was a woman in a head-to-toe leather straitjacket (There’s a new fetish for you!) who was carried to the stage, then slowly unbuckled from her bondage cocoon to do a belly dance routine.

At this performance, the venue itself got into the act. When Alice was encouraged to eat the magic “Eat Me” cake, lanterns lowered from the ceiling, and VIP audience members discovered little cake pops hidden inside.

Alas, Alice has to wake up and crawl back out of the rabbit hole, and the audience has to eventually leave Theatre XIV at the end of each show. At most performances, the cast greets the audience as they come in, and the cast gathers at the bar to say farewell after the performance. But at the Wonderlanadu Pride Skate, they also joined audience members around the corner at Xanadu Roller Arts.

A section of the roller rink had been roped off for the cast and audience, which created a sense of being a genuine VIP. The cast members dressed like civilians for the most part, but some were in flamboyant Pride gear and skating outfits. This gave the audience a chance to see most of them out of their element, and watch the dancers getting used to their skates. 

A couple of cast members did encore performances of their routines onstage at Xanadu, including Mauro Bruni as the rollerskating Mad Hatter. How fitting.

Wonderlanadu Pride Skate was the sort of four-hour experience that makes a great date night. And it was all packed up in a clever portmanteau worthy of Lewis Carrol. It was a one-night-only event, but don’t be surprised if Company XIV does it again, combining rollerskates with their other projects. Speaking of which, their other current show, Cocktail Magique, is still playing right around the corner and recently celebrated its 500th performance. Audiences will have to judge for themselves if they dare to go rollerskating after half a dozen cocktails.

“Queen of Hearts” is currently scheduled to play through December 1, 2025, at Theater XIV (383 Troutman Street, Brooklyn. For tickets and more information, click here to visit Company XIV online. To visit Xandadu Roller Arts (262 Starr Street) online, click here.

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