FringeReview UK 2024

Oliver!

Chichester Festival Theatre

Genre: Children's Theatre, Drama, Live Literature, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, Theatre, Youth Theatre

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

This was always going to be exciting, and intriguing. Director Matthew Bourne is synonymous with reinvention. Cameron Mackintosh is keeper of the flame of Lionel Bart‘s 1960 Oliver! How do you square that? Chichester Festival’s production though (co-directed by Jean-Pierre van der Spuy)  blazes with rediscovery. It plays till September 7^th and transfers to the West End next February.

This is a production entirely different to Mackintosh’s previous revivals (Bourne choreographed the 2009 one). Mackintosh adds new material, strips it back from West End accretions – not to mention the 1968 film – to the ‘poor theatre’ feel of Bart’s roots: Stratford East and Joan Littlewood  So we have a partially re-orchestrated, wholly rethought Bart classic faithful to the original.

Bourne’s go-to designer Lez Brotherston was able to revert to original designer Sean Kenny’s revolve which allows miraculously fluid scene changes. Starting with  a workhouse emblazoned with ’God is Love’, most strikingly there’s London docklands with swinging gantries through to late Regency house-fronts, to Fagin’s den with all its coloured handkerchiefs strung up, to The Three Cripples pub interior.

Orchestrator Stephen Metcalfe’s leitmotifs – small nuggets of a tune like ‘Where is Love?’ – swirl about at key moments. It’s operatic but not heavy. Bart’s great melodies only amplify and there’s not a moment in this two-hours-40 where you’re not at the edge of your seat.

After the great opening ‘Food!’ with a swirling young ensemble, Oliver (Cian Eagle-Service on this occasion) is an appealing boy who reminds us Oliver’s born with a tough streak of entitlement. No other word for it. Eagle-Service’s voice starts and blossoms with enormous confidence: he sings with authority and affect and a soaring upper register, the finest Oliver I’ve seen.

Mr Bumble (Oscar Conlon-Morrey) sneers with some of the most exceptional diction of the night. Every inky-black phrase he utters slams down with a leaden weight, especially when he swings the lead and lies about himself. His narrow-eyed companion in crime Widow Corney (Katy Secombe) makes vocal outrage an artform.

Soon Oliver’s marched to funeral directors Mr Sowerberry (Stephen Matthews, havering dislike like a certain politician of the 18th century; later wrong-footed, wrong-headed Dr Grimwig) and Mrs Sowerberry (Jamie Birkett, all vinegar, later kindly Mrs Bedwin with a snatch of melody), and an egregious cry-bully in Noah Claypole (Callum Hudson, consummate in top-hat sneers) trying it on with put-upon-but-smitten Charlotte (Bethan Keens).

These are preludes as Eagle-Service flits to encounter Artful Dodger (Billy Jenkins) a true-bred musical-hall act: alert, funny with balletic aplomb and delivery. You see Jenkins rethinking each moment as Dodger. ‘His marching-song ‘Consider Yourself’ with the ensemble is one of the most exuberant moments of the show. Mackintosh, Metcalfe and Bourne make it almost the signature-tune. Dandy (Harry Cross) second to Dodger is comically alert, as is Lochlan White’s mischievous Charley Bates. The ensemble and Fagin’s Gang are named at the bottom of this review but Sid (Aaron Zhao) is especially winning.

We’re then introduced to this show’s star: Fagin (Simon Lipkin) who in this rethought production so redefines Fagin it’s tempting to rename the show. This Fagin can mix genuine affection, even concern, with razor-sharp threats when cornered. In Lipkin’s performance he enjoys living on the edge, including challenging Bill Sikes. Lipkin’s vigorous with new partly ad-libbed asides and repartees to everyone: including at a pivotal moment of ‘Reviewing the Situation’ he tells the conductor to shut up. His errant right hand twitches despite himself.

Here’s no stage attempt to parody anti-Semitic tropes, but a moment when the clarinet threads klezmer sets Lipkin’s fingers and body arching is magical.

Lipkin sometimes anticipates words in his songs in ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’. All this naturally with the ensemble doing just that.

Fagin’s other great number is naturally ‘Reviewing the Situation’ which by design here is a show-stopper garnering huge applause. What Lipkin achieves is, instead of a patter-delivery of options, pure ballet: a thought-through lived-in-the-second weigh-up. It’s funny, very determinedly a set-piece but you see Fagin’s options narrow before him.

Nancy (Shanay Holmes) starts out cautiously under Sikes shadow,  yet grows palpably, a darker Nancy with no illusions but one. Holmes’ way to Nancy’s nobility and self-sacrifice is through pain releasing high-voltage passion. Her voice and characterisation shun easy sentiment for a hard-won, hard-bitten sense of hopelessness.

Holmes shows Nancy’s performative brio in the great ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ flying the joys of sex, drink and good company. Nancy’s signature number ‘As Long as He Needs Me’ though is the transition. Perhaps abruptly after she’s been assaulted, Holmes nails the abused lover’s torch-song with searing soprano and an aching, almost broken vocal line.

Nancy’s wiser friend Bet (Isabel Methven) can only warn Nancy, lead the outrage at what befalls her in Bourne’s flash-mob hue-and-cry. Bourne’s choreography is at its most exuberant and detailed in the marvellous ‘Who Will Buy’ song. Here he spaces individual singers around the stage and allows the build-up time to breathe. Only after a dramatic interlude do we see its bustling lyrical exuberance and sheer joie-de-vivre. Bart’s coruscating canon-singing and part-writing bells out clear as a Britten chorus.

Brotherston’s costumes and wigs excel in Dickensian caricature. For instance mildly with Mr Brownlow (Philip Franks, both authoritative and kindly, a striking presence elsewhere too, in The Three Cripples). Or in a tattery near-corpse as Wendy Somerville’s Old Sally with a dark secret is wheeled on and off.

Then there’s Bill Sikes (Aaron Sidwell). The full musical’s a build-up to a man people fear to name. Sidwell is a lighter Sikes than usual, accompanied by a fantastic orchestral ostinato (more from arranger Stephen Metcalfe) straight out of Verdi’s Inquisitor from Don Carlos.

Normally Sikes’ voice is all burl, muscle and menace.  Sidwell’s lighter presence suggests the panther-like rapidity of a natural burglar and throat-slitter, threatening for a nano-second: his Sikes a trigger-personality. Unusually he glimmers a speck of humanity, shock where he’s killed Nancy, then sees her eyes before Oliver effects one twist of agency that maroons Sikes to his fate.

From the klezmer and jazzy as well as atonal wails of Bart’s original score, Graham Hurman’s band stretches up to Fagin’s fingers, in some redefining performances. Those linking orchestral passages, punched out with individual players on the cusp of the 1960s, riff every influence: rock, skiffle, ska, jazz, music hall even 12-tone.

Metcalfe’s slightly bigger-band feel doesn’t iron them out and though it’s invidious to mention solos, perhaps Thomas Leate’s wild violin and Harry Penny’s klezmer-ish clarinet, along with associate musical director Huw Evans’ accordion and Holy Melia’s flute deserve special mention.

Paul Constable’s and Ben Jacobs’ lighting tracks individuals, burns through fogs (striking use of smoke and other effects) and with Adam Fisher’s sound almost sculpts out London.

Bourne’s stunning choreography on the Festival stage makes everything so immediate, the savagery and sentiment intimate, dangerous. In short a musically tremendous, dramatically revelatory production. This is the most complete Oliver! we’re likely to see. One with the blood-tang of discovery and a sharp new world: the British musical arrives here. The best musical revival this year. Don’t wait till it transfers to the West End in December. See it in Chichester.

Though citing them earlier might slow reading, the company here deserve naming. They sing lightning-sketches out of Boz. There’s contained a set of individual vocal cameos, each etched like a Rowlandson print: Racheal Archer, Tegan Banister, Adam Boardman, Ebony Jonelle, Peter Nash, Josh Patel-Foster, Sam Peggs, Leah Vassell, Matthew Whennell-Clark.

The children’s ensemble are terrific and this one (of three alternating) also deserve naming; first as Orphans, then Fagin’s Gang: Snatch (Finley Burrows), Filch (Benjamin Dalton), Spiv Liam Findlay), Kenpop (Preston Cropp), Sid (Aaron Zhao, as indicated especially winning), George (Lily Hanna), Swindler (Charlie Hodson-Prior).

Published July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 by Simon Jenner