All the pre-show publicity about Cameron Mackintosh and the director-choreographer Matthew Bourne presenting a “reimagined” and “revised” version of Lionel Bart’s warhorse will have led some traditionalists to fear the worst. Would the Dickensian melodrama be yanked into a different era? Would Fagin turn into Donald Trump?
In the end, there’s no need to be alarmed. This version of the vintage musical, which is heading to the West End in the autumn, may be more intimate than the productions Mackintosh presented at the Palladium and Drury Lane, but it’s still very much Bart’s show. It’s not the first time, either, that Bourne has taken charge of the choreography. Yes, the vision of the lower depths is still sugar-coated, but having recently endured the National’s drab, semi-musical version of Our Mutual Friend, padded out with weirdly lugubrious songs by PJ Harvey, I’m quite happy to settle for an old-school Cockney knees-up.
So too was the Chichester audience. It’s a while since I’ve heard the locals explode into quite such passionate applause. Shanay Holmes’s Nancy earned some of the loudest cheers for an impassioned rendition of As Long As He Needs Me,which provides a measure of anguish amid all the jollity.
Lez Brotherston’s set design makes efficient use of a revolve as young Oliver (played in this performance by Cian Eagle-Service) is transported from the affectionate mayhem of Fagin’s street gang to the homely comforts of the Brownlow household. Brotherston also gives us evocative glimpses of a London where the dome of St Paul’s emerges from a sooty backdrop. At the start of Act II, Oom-Pah-Pah is the cue for a genial public house singalong that has the allure of a vintage engraving, a fiddler and accordionist joining in the party. Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs’ lighting is full of subtleties, while the conductor Graham Hurman delivers a rich orchestral palette from a modest-sized band.
What to do about the unsettling caricature of Fagin? Simon Lipkin’s wheeler-dealer is recognisably Jewish, but this ne’er-do-well is a breezily engaging figure who is happy to banter with the audience. His spiralling, feverish version of Reviewing the Situation is a klezmer-esque triumph. Aaron Sidwell makes the most of the underwritten role of the murderous Bill Sikes. Oscar Conlon-Morrey gives us a Mr Bumble who stumbles from one mishap to another, desperately trying to cling to his dignity. After the lavish but disappointing revival of Coram Boy, a play that has more than a touch of Dickens in its machinations and juxtapositions of upstairs-downstairs life, Chichester has backed a comforting winner.
★★★★☆
160min
To September 7, cft.org.uk, and at the Gielgud Theatre, London W1 from December 14, oliverthemusical.com
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