Oliver!

The Fox

Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical Oliver! – based loosely on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist – is a show that has almost been killed by kindness. Although it was massive hit both in London (2,618 performances and numerous revivals) and on Broadway (774 performances and one not very successful revival), Oliver! is probably best known, at least in this country, as a perennial favorite of community and high-school theatres. The large children’s chorus makes it a natural for organizations looking for performance prospects for youngsters, and the armies of doting parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles that go with the young performers are guaranteed to fill up houses.

Unfortunately, that means that most theatergoers have seen Oliver! in productions that only a doting parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle could love. Opportunities to catch a polished, professional version of the show are few and far between – which is why the current production at the Fox is so welcome. Based on Cameron Mackintosh’s lavish 1994 revival, which ran for several years at the London Palladium, this is a bright, lively, fast-paced mounting of the show. From the grim opening in which starving orphans dream of “Food, Glorious Food” in a cold and forbidding workhouse to the bright London street scenes of “Who Will Buy” and “Consider Yourself”, this is an Oliver! bursting at the seams with energy, danced and (for the most part) sung beautifully by a talented cast that does full justice to Lionel Bart’s endlessly engaging score.

Writer and improv comic Mark McCracken makes a strong impression as Fagin, although he’s taller and more limber than is the norm for this part. He’s also far less ethnic than other great stage Fagins such as Ron Moody and Jonathan Pryce, but then that’s the direction in which either political correctness or common courtesy (take your pick) has been moving the character over the years. Making her professional stage debut, Renata Reneé Wilson is a passionate and persuasive Nancy, with appropriately show-stopping renditions of “Oom Pah Pah” and “As Long as He Needs Me”.

Among the kids, Andrew Blau is a ball of charismatic energy as The Artful Dodger. By contrast, Justin S. Pereira’s Oliver comes across as rather pallid, although that’s largely a function of the book, which asks the title character to merely look and sing like an angel. Master Pereira does both, with a particularly affecting rendition of “Where is Love?”.

The smaller character roles are also quite strong here. Jimmy Flannery and Kimberley Xavier Martins, for example, are wonderfully vile as the undertakers to whom Oliver is sold by the venal Mr. Bumble and Widow Corney (played with comic relish by Ken Clement and Gwen Eyster). They also do a bang-up job with their comic turn, “That’s Your Funeral”

Geoffrey Garrat’s re-creation of Matthew Bourne’s original staging and choreography is almost too rich, with so many individual character bits firing off at once that it’s impossible to take them all in, and director Graham Gill moves things along at a brisk pace. Add in Adrian Vaux’s richly detailed sets and Anthony Ward’s colorful costumes, and you have a show guaranteed to charm and delight young and old alike. Be aware, however, that despite the number of children in the cast, this is NOT children’s theatre, and the very young may get restless during the two hour and forty minute running time.

Oliver! will continue to charm and delight through February 22nd [2004]. Call Metrotix at 314-534-1111 for ticket information.

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