Oliver! evaluation: A Dickens of a present, writes GEORGINA BROWN
Oliver! (Chichester Festival Theatre)
Verdict: A Dickens of a show
What a difference that exclamation mark made. Lionel Bart reinvented Dickens’s great novel Oliver Twist, about grinding poverty, child exploitation and murder, as a fairy tale, filled with chirpy Cockney capers and lovable, hummable tunes.
As a 13-year-old schoolboy, Cameron Mackintosh became spellbound by the 1960 original production and, ever since, Oliver! has spun a thread through his theatrical life.
As a 19-year-old he was an assistant stage manager (also playing a pie-man) on the show’s first tour.
As a producer, his spectacular, lavish 1994 production, directed by Sam Mendes with ‘musical-staging’ by Matthew Bourne, ran for more than three years and was later resuscitated by Rupert Goold, with Rowan Atkinson among others as pocket-picking Fagin.
Taking a leaf out of Fagin’s book, Mackintosh is reviewing the situation 30 years on, with Bourne now directing as well as choreographing a stripped-back show with no big names.
‘What a difference that exclamation mark made. Lionel Bart reinvented Dickens’s great novel Oliver Twist, about grinding poverty, child exploitation and murder, as a fairy tale, filled with chirpy Cockney capers and lovable, hummable tunes’, writes Georgina Brown
‘While still an unashamed love letter to Bart and to a robust, raunchy Dickensian London, the tone is more complex, striking darker notes and, once it gets going’, she said
Bourne’s spring-loaded, high- kicking, petticoat-flouncing dancers fill every inch of the stage
While still an unashamed love letter to Bart and to a robust, raunchy Dickensian London, the tone is more complex, striking darker notes and, once it gets going, telling a gripping tale which sends shivers down the spine, thanks to Aaron Sidwell’s bloodless, steely, chillingly brutish Bill Sikes. That scar on his skull spells danger.
Bourne’s spring-loaded, high- kicking, petticoat-flouncing dancers fill every inch of the stage. With the revolve working overtime, designer Lez Brotherston conjures up a giddying canvas of glorious, gritty views of London, capturing the boisterous bustle of street life with lovely murky backdrops of the Thames and St Paul’s on the skyline, as well as scenes of quiet cruelty behind closed doors.
The scrawny orphans in the workhouse really do look half-starved, their rations evidently re-routed down the greedy necks of Oscar Conlon-Morrey’s blubbery, blustering Mr Bumble and his squeeze, Katy Secombe’s Widow Corney, voracious in every sense.
But it’s not all grim. Cian Eagle-Service’s Oliver, a perfectly poised, solemn and stoic sweetie, doesn’t seem to suffer much for being made to sleep in a coffin by the hilariously cadaverous Mr and Mrs Sowerberry. (This is a show filled with odd partnerships.)
Taken under the wing of Billy Jenkins’s slinky Artful Dodger, he finds gin and fun aplenty in Fagin’s lair, where the fluttery-fingered, sly gang leader ingeniously magics coins from behind his ear. Simon Lipkin plays Fagin as a beguiling, middle-European, kohl-eyed, Johnny Depp-ish vaudevillian, in a tattered gown, who seems genuinely (rather than creepily) fond of his gang of lost boys.
Lipkin overdoes the ad-libbing a tad, occasionally jumping through the fourth wall to send himself up, as well as the show; yet also persuades us that Fagin’s exploitation of small boys and all-consuming miserliness is merely sensible future-proofing for his old age. But the heart and soul of this show belongs to Shanay Holmes’s degraded, defiant, shattered and shattering Nancy, leaving you in no doubt that a lifetime of selling herself has come at an appalling emotional cost. Her rendition of As Long As He Needs Me raises the roof.
A West End run has already been announced. Who could ask for more?
Until September 7.
Anyone who has ever had a teenage crush on a pop star will enjoy Fangirls, a glittery new musical comedy from Australia, where it was a huge hit
Fangirls (Lyric Hammersmith, London)
Verdict: Poppy fun
Anyone who has ever had a teenage crush on a pop star will enjoy this glittery new musical comedy from Australia, where it was a huge hit. It’s about 14-year-old misfit Edna (Jasmine Elcock) who takes her fangirling just a little too far.
Scholarship girl Edna is obsessed with Harry (Thomas Grant), the floppy-haired lead singer of boyband Heartbreak Nation (remind you of anyone?).
When she and her schoolfriends, nice peacemaker Brianna (Miracle Chance) and meanie attention-seeker Jules (Mary Malone), try to get tickets for the band’s Sydney gig, Edna’s single mum Caroline (Debbie Kurup) can’t afford it, while the pampered Jules invites only Brianna along as her guest.
So Edna hatches a plan with the help of her online friend and fellow Harry fan-fiction writer Salty (Terique Jarrett); she kidnaps the singer after the concert, convinced that Harry is trapped by his success — and that they should run away together, like heroes in one of her fantasies. But first she has to hide him in her bedroom…
As things unravel, in best musical style lessons are learned, apologies made and everyone emerges as a better person.
The occasionally clownish comedy undercuts some of the darker elements — including teen loneliness, self-harm and parental divorce — that Yve Blake (who wrote the book, music and lyrics) alludes to, but doesn’t develop.
Director Paige Rattray, corralling a youthful cast, gives the evening the poppy energy it needs, much helped by Ebony Williams’s punchy choreography and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s terrific lighting, designed to make us feel that we’re at a stadium gig.
Mr Grant (who has perfected Harry’s hair flick) and Miss Elcock sing beautifully, and the songs are a decent — if samey — pastiche of the boyband genre.
Until August 24.
Finn Cole stars in Red Speedo (pictured), showing at Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre
Red Speedo (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond)
Verdict: Dive in
There are those who may go to Red Speedo for the wrong reasons — like the prospect of spending 90 minutes with handsome Finn Cole from Peaky Blinders sporting nothing more than the titular scarlet budgie-smugglers.
But Lucas Hnath’s play about Cole’s American swimmer, Ray — tempted to take drugs so he can qualify for the Olympics and ensure a sponsorship deal — is also a cunningly conceived drama of compelling human dilemmas.
At its best, Hnath’s writing put me in mind of the great David Mamet, author of Glengarry Glen Ross. Indeed, students of Mamet’s writing might be inclined to re-name Hnath’s 2013 play Speedo-the-Plow.
Like Mamet, he takes everyday Americans and has them operate in tawdry moral grey areas. There’s even a touch of Greek tragedy, setting the amusingly dim swimmer up for a fall, before taking him down in stages.
Ray’s lawyer brother Peter (a hustling Ciaran Owens) is keen to cash in on his commercial value and tries to talk Ray’s suspicious coach (Fraser James) out of reporting his alleged doping to the authorities.
Ray, however, is also in the sway of his hard-ass, former drug-fiend ex-girlfriend Lydia (Parker Lapaine), who he hopes will keep him in the anabolic steroids that have set his libido at unmanageable levels.
It all comes to a comically violent conclusion in Matthew Dunster’s impressive production, which re-invents the Orange Tree Theatre.
Anna Fleischle’s design creates Ray’s training baths using a coffin-sized pool with aluminium steps; while the entire theatre is swathed in blue ripples.
Holly Khan’s sound adds sports-hall echoes, and the honk of a starting hooter for every scene, to ensure a show that’s short, lean and easy on the eye.
