Peter Viney's Blog

Oliver! by Lionel Bart
Reconceived by Matthew Bourne & Cameron Mackintosh

Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne
Designed by Lez Brotherton
Jeanne-Pierre van der Spuy-co-director
Lighting Design by Paule Constable
Sound Design – Adam Fisher
Stephen Metcalfe-new Orchestrations
Graham Hurman – Musical supervisor / conductor

Chichester Festival Theatre
Saturday 3rd August 2024, 14.30

CAST
Simon Lipkin – Fagin
Shanay Holmes – Nancy
Aaron Sidwell – Bill Sikes
Billy Jenkins – The Artful Dodger
Philip Franks – Mr Brownlow
Oscar Conlon-Morrey-Mr Bumble
Katy Secombe- Widow Corney
Stephen Matthews – Mr Sowerberry / Dr Gromwig
Jamie Birkett- Mrs Sowerberry / Mrs Bedwin
Callum Hudson – Noah Claypole
Isabelle Methven – Bet
Lochlan White – Charley Bates
Harry Cross- Dandy
Cian Eagle Service / Raphael Korniets / Jack Philpott– Oliver Twist
+ company
Rachael Archer
Tegan Bannister
Adam Boardman
Bethany Huckle ( Swing / Dance Captain)
Ebony Jonelle
Bethan Keens – Charlotte
Danny Lane – Swing
Peter Nash
Josh Patel-Foster
Sam Peggs
Jasmine Sakyiams -Swing
Wendy Somerville- Old Sally
Leah Vassell
Matthew Whennell-Clark
+

Fagin’s Gang

The Chichester summer musical is one of the theatrical events of the year. It usually goes on to London, and given Cameron Mackintosh’s involvement this time, I’m sure it will. I bet it costs a lot more per ticket then. Every year, I’m stretching for superlatives. Five star is the default setting. Oliver! this year got an instant standing ovation, and just about the longest one too. The cast had to break it. It could have gone on another five minutes. Yes, it was that good. It was also completely full, packed. Simon Lipkin (as Fagin) got a very good joke out of the full theatre, full even to the cheapest top extreme side seats in the balcony. The restaurant was fully booked before and after. We couldn’t get a reservation.

The musical is an art form where America excels. I’d say ‘an authentically American art form.’ Lionel Bart’s Oliver! is the British musical that breaks the dominance. A story from Charles Dickens, with music, songs and book by Lionel Bart. It was first a stage musical in 1960, then the film. No one beats Dickens for lump in the throat eye-dabbing conclusions.

The quality of the music is as good as any musical ever. It’s different though. There’s no place for a dancing chorus. No dancing girls. The kids do a lot of the movement instead. The company / Swing are mainly doing older Victorian characters.

This version is ‘reconceived’. That puzzled some reviewers because they expected something radically different. No, it’s just enhanced. Improved? Yes, I think so. It’s still Dickensian London. Still costumed. The male roles are still male. The female roles are still female. I would say Fagin has been rethought.

Add a Lez Brotherton designed stage set with revolve. We saw Edward Scissorhands earlier this year, another Matthew Bourne / Lez Brotherton collaboration. The set is fluid. Great use is made of catwalks. A bridge can turn to become Fagin’s den. We get rooms, the orphanage, the undertaker’s all seamlessly integrated and revolving into view.

There is an outer ring walkway right at the edge, which surrounds the grilled over orchestra pit, with the orchestra itself right below the stage. This is unusual for Chichester. The orchestra are usually up above the stage, with the conductor visible to the cast on monitors in the auditorium. Here he had his head sticking up in the middle, between stage and circular walkway. I reckon he needed to be able to watch the action, especially when Simon Lipkin as Fagin did Reviewing The Situation, with stops and starts. OK, but we were in the front row (the musical is always the first play I book on the Chichester Friends booking). The conductor was lit, and mildly irritating to have just outside our eye line. (He mouths along to the words too!) I reckon right in the centre, six or seven seats to our right, it would have been really intrusive.

I can see a reason. When this goes to London, it will almost certainly be in a theatre with a conventional orchestra pit in front of the stage. You can’t replicate that at Chichester at all, because the stage comes right down to auditorium level. The set will have been designed to transfer, and therefore with the walkways, they will use the full height of a theatre. Therefore the musicians are in the basement, but the conductor needs to see.

I’ve edited an ELT adaptation of Oliver Twist so I’ve read the original Dickens book again in the last few years.

The music is superb. It has a high “known songs” element too. As Long As He Needs Me has Shanay Holmes as Nancy is lifting the rafters with a perfect, beautiful version of this huge ballad with sustained notes that bring a shiver to the spine. The song was a #1 or #2 hit (depending on which music paper chart you preferred) for Shirley Bassey in Autumn 1960. Sammy Davis Jnr had a US Top 20 hit with a gender switched version. Where is Love is another gorgeous song that stands alone outside the context of the musical. One of Bart’s achievements on the score is that specific narrative-enhancing songs like Consider Yourself, Pick A Pocket or Two, Oom Pah Pah, Reviewing The Situation are such catchy songs.

I’d Do Anything also had a life outside the musical. I did limelights on a variety show Pearly King & Queen medley that managed to incorporate Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be (also from 1960), Consider Yourself and end with Knees Up Mother Brown.

Who Will Buy? is near to my heart. We used it as the opening ‘villagers’ scene in an ELT pantomime with a large cast of teachers augmenting our basic weekly team. It took about half the total rehearsal time to get the multiple voices right, and we only had a four piece band (piano, drums, bass, guitar). It was superb here, split in two of course (slow and fast) and is my earworm from the production.

Fagin is the discussion. The character was an anti-Semitic stereotype in Dickens’ novel, though that changed in the musical to add humour, and both Lionel Bart and Ron Moody were Jewish. The music in Fagin’s songs have a Yiddish lilt and tempo. That’s a positive. I’ve danced to Hava Nagila at weddings myself. Simon Lipkin channels Johnny Depp in Pirates of The Caribbean with costume to fit. His Fagin is eminently likeable and breaks the fourth wall to relate directly to the audience a couple of times. That’s how you make an apparent baddie lovable. We don’t get a heavy accent, if we get any accent at all. He is perfect at the magician slight of hand tricks. I noted reviewers comments that he ‘improvised’ in Reviewing The Situation. Bollocks. That’s meticulously rehearsed and timed stuff that appears to be improvisation. I say this as someone who has watched comedians twice a night six days a week for a summer season. Appearing to be improvising is an ultimate skill. You can’t improvise a song with a thirteen piece orchestra, though as noted above, the conductor had to watch him. Forever after, Simon Lipkin will be my mental image of Fagin, eclipsing all others.

Billy Jenkins is The Artful Dodger, exuding cheerful likeability again as he inhabited the whole stage with aplomb.

The kids are wonderful. There are three teams, which you have to have with juveniles, divided into Bethnal Green, Wapping and Limehouse, That’s more creative than when my granddaughter was in The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum, where the teams were merely A Team and B Team. They did (I think) five days on, five days off. I think we saw Bethnal Green, but I can’t swear to it. I know that with multiple teams, you are also on standby as an understudy to your equivalent in another team.

Our Oliver Twist was Jack Philpott (there are two others). He was not the one on press night. Incredibly talented and he looks exactly right. As the pictures have him with the same team we saw, the Olivers may be tied to the team.

Then we have Bill Sikes, the burglar, and Nancy, his girlfriend, the tart with a heart of gold. Aaron Sidwell and Shanay Holmes. She is a magnificent lead singer. Bill Sykes was genuinely scary in his violence. It has to be that violent. It’s the story! A reviewer sniffed that he was booed in the curtain call as if it were a pantomime. This is the greatest accolade a stage villain can have. Aaron Sidwell knew it- a huge grin greeted the boos.

Then we have the character parts. Oscar Conlon-Morrey as Mr Bumble and Katy Secombe as Widow Corney, in a comedy double act.

That’s paralleled by the undertakers, Mr and Mrs Sowerberry, Stephen Matthews and Jamie Birkett, together with the snottily sniffing Noah Catchpole (Callum Hudson). The business with coffins was executed spot on.

Philip Franks was an earnest Mr Brownlow, who saves Oliver, and he has done a lot of Dickens, and his comedy earnestness goes back to TV’s The Darling Buds of May.

Was there any fault? Yes. The lighting plot. It probably only affected a few seats. In Consider Yourself and Oom Pah Pah, a light high stage left was shining (burning) directly in our eyes. It was exacerbated in the second half where the cast mill around before the song and that light was on the whole time. What was its purpose? It was shining on the backs of the cast, so perhaps to give depth and dimension. It wasn’t lighting them. You can take a light in the eyes for a few seconds and that happens in plays, but it was on for half of a long Consider Yourself, which then switched to two lights higher which also hit us straight in the eyes. It was so painful that we both found the next few minutes hard to watch. When you’re designing a light shining down from the back, it should not spill past the rim of the stage onto the audience. They really need a member of the lighting team to sit in A28 and A27 and run the lighting plot for those songs. They’ll change it (if their eyesight survives the experience). It might not even be the preset program, it might be that titling the actual light a few degrees down will cure it.

Overall, it was a supreme musical. Every year at the summer musical, we think this can’t be bettered. Every year they either equal or top the one before.

A definitive 5 star.

*****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

5 star
Gareth Carr, What’s On Stage *****
Georgina Brown, Daily Mail *****
James George, Portsmouth News *****
Gary Shipton, West Sussex Gazette *****

4 star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Clive Davis, The Times ****
Matt Hemley, The Stage ****

3 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ***

LINKS ON THIS BLOG
MATTHEW BOURNE
Edward Scissorhands, Southampton Mayflower 2024