Layla Schillert is Alice and comedy magician Darren 'Dizzy' Partridge the Mad Hatter in the full company announced for Cirque Alice, which gives its European premiere at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall this Christmas.
Layla Schillert, a 19-year-old singer and screen actress who reached the Top 50 of Australian Idol in 2023, takes the title role in Cirque Alice when the circus show gives its European premiere at the Royal Festival Hall from Saturday 12 December 2026. Producers Roast Productions and Senbla named the full company today.
Around her, Darren 'Dizzy' Partridge, a comedy magician whose career has run from the West End to the Sydney Opera House, plays The Mad Hatter, and Raphael Papo, an Olivier Award-nominated violinist who played the Fiddler in Fiddler on the Roof at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre and the Barbican, is The Cheshire Cat. Dancer and choreographer Billy Ellitts, currently training at Rambert School, is The White Rabbit.
The rest of Wonderland is built from speciality acts:
- The Tweedles: Dario Togni and Michael Togni (Icarian games)
- The Caterpillar: contortion quartet Enkhzaya Battogoo, Dolgorsuren Ganbold, Doljinsuren Ganbold and Shinechimeg Otgonbayar
- Snap Dragonfly: Vladyslav Tsarov (flying pole)
- The March Hare: Viktor Hladchenko (Cyr wheel)
- The Knights: the Ramadhani Brothers, Ibrahim Jobu Ramadhani and Fadhili Ramadhani (head balancing)
- The Dormouse: Daniel Onofre (Rolla Bolla)
- The Queen of Hearts: Veronika Ivanova (hand balance)
- The Flamingos: Anna Stelmakh and Evgeni Slepukhin (Duo Daylight)
- The White Queen and The White King: roller-skating pair Mary Ellen Nielsen Wolfe and Spencer Tyce Nielsen (Duo Transcend)
Several of those acts arrive with television titles behind them. The Ramadhani Brothers won America's Got Talent: Fantasy League in 2024, the first hand and head balancers ever to take an AGT crown, and Duo Transcend were runners-up on America's Got Talent: The Champions in 2020. The Togni Brothers grew up in one of Italy's oldest circus dynasties.
Lillianna Clifton, Kenya McKay-Goodridge, Mark Samaras, Ricardo Walker and Sasha Woodward form the dance ensemble. Walker has danced in The Lion King and The Prince of Egypt in the West End, Samaras and Woodward both count Moulin Rouge! The Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre among their credits, and for McKay-Goodridge, still a student at Liverpool Theatre School, this is a professional stage debut. Molly Hord, the 2026-27 Organ Scholar at the Royal Albert Hall, is the company's organist.
"Taking in the role of Alice in this unique adaption of Alice in Wonderland through the lens of cirque is truly a dream come true!" said Schillert.
Devised by Simon Painter and Tim Lawson, the pair behind Circus 1903, which had two sold-out seasons at the Southbank Centre, Cirque Alice takes Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as its starting point and turns the book's familiar figures into circus acts. Across two hours, pitched at all ages, it combines aerial work, acrobatics, contortion and puppetry with guest musicians and a soundtrack of reworked classical pieces, and some of the audience are seated on the stage itself, right beneath the performers working overhead.
Ash Jacks McCready and Kirsty Painter lead the creative team as creative directors. Dane Bates choreographs, Angela Aaron designs the costumes and Hugo Mercier the lighting, while the musical arrangements come from Martin Raabe-Olsen and Marius Christiansen. Roast Productions and Senbla present the season in association with Lawson and Painter.
Cirque Alice runs at the Royal Festival Hall until Sunday 3 January 2027, with press night on Tuesday 15 December 2026, and tickets are on sale now.
