Brighton Year-Round 2024

Oliver!

Brighton Theatre Group

Genre: Adaptation, Children's Theatre, Community Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Musical Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Just occasionally you think you’re back at the premiere of a long-established classic. Brighton Theatre Group’s production of Lionel Bart‘s 1960 Oliver! directed by Michael Burnie blazes with discovery.

From the klezmer and jazzy as well as atonal wails of Bart’s original score, Carl Greenwood’s band stretches up to Fagin’s fingers – for a reason I’ll come back to, in some redefining performances.

It’s a musical revelation, not just restoring numbers deleted from some performances and the 1968 film. But linking orchestral passages, punched out with individual players on the cusp of the 1960s, riffs every influence: rock, skiffle, ska, jazz, music hall even 12-tone. It boils over from Stratford East and Theatre Workshop where Bart learned his craft – and aesthetic. There’s a whiff of Brecht here. It’s not often the reek of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop breaks through: but Bart, you feel, took it with him to the West End.

Everything here’s rethought, the production fuller than any professional production bar Cameron Mackintosh could manage. Jodie Michele’s on-point choreography keeps up to 30 people on stage airborne. Production values alone shame many touring musicals.

Joe Wailes’ lighting is phenomenally good at tracking individuals, burning through fogs (striking use of smoke and other effects) and with Ben Lawrance’s sound almost sculpts out London. Occasional mic issues will be ironed out. An upper gantry alternates with a workhouse with ’God is Love’ sardonically daubed on its walls, or a London skyline. It all gives on to a flexible set of interiors – Fagin’s den, crowded street, parlours – that flash-dance off to a brief darkness.

After the great opening ‘Food!’ with a swirling young ensemble, Oliver (Christian Ridley on this occasion) is an appealing boy who reminds us Oliver’s born with a tough streak of entitlement. No other word for it. Ridley’s voice gathers enormous confidence by the end of the first act and proves appealing throughout: latterly he sings with authority and affect.

Mr Bumble (James Witt) 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 (Hannah Garred) makes vocal outrage an artform, seduction a roll of eyes like pound zeroes.

Soon Oliver’s marched to funeral directors Mr Sowerberry (H Reeves, havering dislike) and Mrs Sowerberry (Emma Lindfield, all vinegar, later Old Sally with a dark secret), and an egregious cowardly bully in Noah Claypole (Ben Sandeman, consummate in top-hat sneers) trying it on with put-upon-but-smitten Charlotte (Holly Klassen).

These are preludes as Ridley flits to encounter Artful Dodger (Elias Prosser) a true-bred musical-hall act: alert, funny with somersaulting aplomb and delivery. ‘His ‘Consider Yourself’ with the ensemble is one of the most exuberant moments of the show.

We’re then introduced to this show’s star: Fagin (Jake Beniston) who redefines Fagin in a fantastic yellow frock-coat. Here’s no stage attempt to parody either anti-Semitic tropes or age, but a moment when the clarinet plays klezmer sets his fingers and body arching is magical.

Beniston’s lean and creepily sexy, almost Byronic. Like some David Essex alter-ego gone dark. Beniston gesticulates klezmer without guying Fagin. What he does, is anticipate words in his songs in ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’ which turns out a show-stopper. All this naturally with the ensemble trying to do just that.

Beniston’s interaction is first-rate too. His genuine fondness for Dodger and Nancy, wary respect for Sikes, ambivalent affection for Oliver though implacably to his own ends, is palpable.

His other great number – apart from plea-bargaining peace with Bill Sikes – is naturally ‘Reviewing the Situation’ towards the end. What Beniston achieves is, instead of a patter-delivery of options, a thought-through lived-in-the-second weigh-up. It’s funny, but you see Fagin’s options narrow before him. And his end, looking on the end of Sikes, is far darker than we’re used to.

Fagin’s gang – all on this occasion Charlie (Soli Hougham), Captain (Oscar Baker), Nipper (Adriano Santos) winningly swell the adult ranks.

Nancy (Lucy Romero Clark) is the other stand-out voice, though several like Witt are phenomenal in smaller roles. Romero Clark’s way to Nancy’s nobility and self-sacrifice is through high-voltage passion, and her voice as well as characterisation will stun you.

Romero Clark’s shows Nancy’s natural performative brio – she would have made a great hostess, even actress, as Bart envisages her – in the great ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ flying the joys of sex, drink and good company. And of course there’s Nancy’s signature number ‘As Long as He Needs Me’ the abused lover’s torch-song. Romero Clark nails this with soaring soprano and idiomatic vocals clear in all she performs. It’s a stand-out, abetted in her interactions with Oliver.

Her friend Bet (Talia Wenstone) is a very able, sexy second, shading those warnings to Nancy, leading the outrage at what befalls her.

Shout-out for costumes headed by Donna Harrop; and Chris Horlock’s wig and make-up unit. They excel in Dickensian caricature. For instance with Mr Brownlow (Ian Gledhill) Dr Grimwig (Tony Thompson): both attractive speaking parts, as is Mrs Bedwin (Ann Atkins), with a memorable stare of affection or admonition.

Michele’s choreography is at its most exuberant and detailed in the marvellous ‘Who Will Buy’ song. In its bustling lyrical exuberance and sheer joie-de-vivre it’s the highpoint of the evening. Bart’s coruscating canon-singing and part-writing bells out clear as a Britten chorus.

If that’s a lightning-sketch out of Boz, in it there’s contained a set of individual vocal cameos, each etched like a Rowlandson print: Rose Seller (an ardent, individual Beth Yeates), Milk Maid (a fine descanting second in Emily Wright) Knife Grinder (Abbi Crawford in particular, wondrously lucid bass-notes), Strawberry Seller (Chanel Pritchard, perfectly pitching the canon’s conclusion).

Then.. there’s Bill Sikes (Nathan Charman). The full musical’s a build-up to a man people fear to name (Hogwarts anyone?). Charman not only stamps out the part in grime and tattoos (another shout to Horlock’s department), his voice is all burl, muscle and menace. Charman’s also playfully threatening for a nano-second: his Sikes a trigger-personality. His memorable acting here never relaxes into any humanity, bar that psychotic twist, suggesting animal magnetism. Charman even once leads on a white English bull terrier (this Bullseye impeccably behaved), elsewhere handled by one of the ensemble.

In short a musically tremendous, dramatically revelatory production. You’re not going to see anything this special in most (if any) revivals, however luxury-cast. In stripping-back, then regrowing a complete ensemble with even lesser songs, this is the most complete Oliver! we’re likely to see. One with the blood-tang of discovery and a new world: the British musical arrives here.

Ensemble

Lottie Devriendt, Georgia Edwards, Grace Garland, Iona Jenkins, Holly Klassen, Denise Popple, Chanel Pritchard, Emma Lindfield, Eleanor Simmonds, Aemilia Smith, Sarah Walker, Talia Wenstone, Jenny White, Phoebe White, Emily Wright, Beth Yeates.

Archie Brooks, Luke Carruthers, Abbi Crawford, James Kiley, Tim Laker, Fred Lindfield, Phil Nair-Brown, Sam Pilkington, Ben Sandeman, Rob Stevens, Josh White.

Orphans, Fagin’s Gang

Sylvia Bennett, Scarlet Boxall, Max Chatfield, Cleo Crawford, Susannah Frater-Baker, Arlo Giles-Buabasah, Florence Glover, Lily Harris-Smith, Scarlett Hiles, Lola Huggett, Amelie-Eve Idle, Dylan Inglethorpe, Jacobi Knight, Rosy Levine, Alkinos Manon, Jake Marshall, Thia Miles, Megan Simmons-Tubb, Jessica Smith, Summer Tregidga, Luisa Turner

Published February 15, 2024February 17, 2024 by Simon Jenner