AS LONG AS WE NEED IT…
To do a timeworn musical, entangled in all- too -familiar earworms, you’ll be able to both sharpen, problem and replace it or lovingly polish the outdated machine. If you sharpen and strip it you danger a sure dismay within the devoted ( as within the Fish and Fein noirish Oklahoma) nevertheless it may be a revelation. Harder, in a method, to shine it with such loving respect {that a} half-forgotten gleam instantly makes all its world new. This takes the second route, and Oliver 2004 comes up shiny recent.
To obtain high polish of this Lionel Bart perennial, you gotta choose a genius artist or two: this Chichester has achieved, with Cameron Mackintosh’s loving re-production . Matthew Bourne directs and, importantly, choreographs, giving the ragamuffin boys and surging London crowds simply the proper stage of joyful looseness, kicking and swirling and crowding and revolving. Graham Hurman’s musical supervision faultlessly finds its method between music-hall Oom-pah-pah and the ethereal great thing about the daybreak road cries in Who Will Buy? Oliver – Cian Eagle-Service on press evening – is confidently, heartbreakingly touching. And all of it takes place inside Lez Brotherston’s astonishing , vigorous, atmospheric and intricately detailed old-London set which turns and grows, brilliantly thrilling from any of the three sides of the auditorium: right here’s : Sikes lurking on metallic stairs, Oliver singing his aubade on a balcony, Fagin’s den shrouded in stolen silk handkerchiefs, crowds whirling beneath.
Fagin, although! Simon Lipkin is a revelation, freed from each caricature and the merry acquainted tributes to Ron Moody: he’s as vigorous and teasing as a standup, giving the rogue an air continually conflicted, tremblingly fearful of Sikes, waving away the klezmer violin moments, human and redeemable: his ultimate look, arm in arm fatherly with the Artful Dodger, is unexpectedly transferring. Aaron Sidwell’s Bill Sikes was surprising too: his assured menace explodes into sudden violence, however extra unsettling nonetheless is a curious fringe of nasal camp in his voice. Shanay Holmes’ Nancy is tarty and larky, first rate and deluded: when she wanders around the stage singing ” As lengthy as he wants me” she appears to be looking out , with out a lot hope, for somebody to agree together with her deadly loyalty.
Full confession: after 64 years of star-studded productions and faculty galas, and the film, and countless muzakized tunes, I used to be uninterested in Oliver. Barely wished to go. Before final evening, the final pleasure I obtained of its existence was Alan Bennett’s splendidly catty comment about making an attempt to solid The History Boys, ans struggling theough auditions of prematurely aged baby actors – “The boys who’d been in Oliver: Lionel Bart cut a swathe theough the youthof England like the Somme”. None of that right here; even Bennett may smile on the pure, ebullient, Bourne ensemble. Bravo. You obtained me again.
cft.org.uk to 7 Sept
