A (0:00)

I am reviewing Bad, Bad, Bad. The new production, Ba da la la la. Who will buy? You will buy. I will buy. Everyone will buy, because this is extraordinary. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Micky Joe and I am obsessed with all things theater, particularly when it's this good, dare I say glorious. I am talking about the brand new revival of Lionel Bart's musical masterpiece, Oliver, produced in the West End by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who has a long and loving history with the show. He has brought it back to the Gielgud Theatre after this production had a regional tryout at Chicheta Festival Theatre last year. It's a new production, directed and choreographed by Sir Matthew Bourne, and after beginning previews in December, it has officially opened this month, January 2025, where it begins what is already set to be a very successful run because the show, prior to its opening night performance earlier this week, has already announced an extension to March 2026. The current actors who are playing Oliver will have broken voices by the time that that comes around. And let me tell you, it's going to be extending again because this feels like an Oliver that has been brought back to the West End in order to run for a really long time, possibly forever. There will be cockroaches holding little bowls, singing food, glorious food by the time that this eventually closes. Now, there may be some of you thinking, of course it's good. It's Oliver. It's one of the great British musicals. I'm here to tell you that this is especially good and I will be letting you know why in today's review. There may be others among you who think Oliver is not a show that interests you whatsoever, and I will strive to convince you that that is not the case with this one as well. Because I do think this is unmissable in the West End right now. Possibly the new best show in town. It really is that sensational. And I'm going to be telling you exactly why in today's full review. We're of course going to be talking about this new product, about its casting, about the really winning creative elements, the way that it's staged, the lighting, oh my God, the lighting. I could get ahead of myself. But I would also like to know what you thought if you had the chance to see the show either in Chichester Festival Theatre last summer or already at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End. Comment down below with all of your thoughts and feelings about this new revival. Finally, if you enjoyed this review and you are seeing or hearing me for the first time, make sure you give me a follow or subscribe wherever you you are enjoying it and feel free to go and seek me out across the rest of the musical theatre Internet where I'll be sharing more thoughts and feelings about this and other West End and Broadway shows. There are many more reviews, news recaps and features to come in the next few weeks, but for now, let's talk all about Oliver So a Little Bit of History then Oliver is a 1960 musical with book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. It's based on the early 19th century novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, and like much of his work, it follows a young orphaned boy who ends up heading to London in order to make his fortune. Oliver, however, does so under more physically and emotionally challenging circumstances than most. We first meet him in a workhouse where, after finishing the measly scraps of gruel that he has fed alongside the other children, he dares to ask Mr. Bumble the Beadle there, please sir, may I have some more? And Mr. Bumble and the other staff are outraged and dismiss him immediately. They sit sell him because this gluttonous attitude will surely poison the minds of the other children working there. Read Slaves. Tiny, tiny Dickensian slaves, and he sells them to Mr. And Mrs. Sourberry, an incredibly creepy couple who would not look out of place in a Tim Burton film. They run a funeral parlor where again, Oliver is treated dreadfully, prompting him to escape, head for London, make his fortune, yada yada yada. The first person he meets being the Artful Dodger who introduces him to Fagin and his gang of young employees. Reid thieves. Tiny, tiny Dickensian thieves. However, for all of Fagan's warmth and charm as he instructs Oliver alongside the other boys, how important it is to pick a pocket in order to guarantee your own financial prosperity in a cruel world in harsh Dickensian London, we quickly learn that one of his associates, Bill Sykes, is not all that warm or charming. He is in fact a terrifying man who has this abusive relationship with his girlfriend Nancy, who, despite being worldly, remains by his side out of loyalty and love. Only when Oliver, on his first day as a thief, ends up being taken away to the house of a rich gentleman, potentially, where he could spill dangerous secrets that could give away the whole operation, everything shifts into a higher and more frantic gear with some very grave consequences. And that is the plot of Oliver, with some banging tunes to go along with it, from the brilliant Lionel. Bart. Honestly, Lionel, what a great job you did with this one. And believe it or not, this may shock you, this was my first time ever seeing Oliver on stage. Q gasp. I know I haven't really had that many opportunities. There was a recent celebrated regional revival at Leeds Playhouse that I was sad to miss a couple of years ago. I think that had aspirations to move to the West End, but, you know, Cameron already had this plan, so that was sadly not going to be possible. Sometimes that's just how the. How the gruel crumbles. But prior to that, we haven't really seen a professional production of Oliver in the UK since the tour of the last London revival, which used one of those Android Webber TV casting shows in order to find Jodi Prenger, who would play the role of Nancy. And over the last 65 years, Oliver has been revived a handful of times, but most often in London. I mean, if only because of its setting and because of the mood of its music. It does seem to speak more to British audiences. I guess it's our Annie. Plucky, feisty, singing orphans going up against nefarious grown ups and eventually being united with kindly, wealthy older gentlemen. They also both feature dogs. And though we could make more Annie comparisons, perhaps for this production in particular, there is a more obvious show that we can link this to and which this production in particular seems to be trying to draw comparisons to, which is Les Miserables. Hear me out. Now, discernibly, they're set in very different places and they cover very different events. However, it was the stage production of Oliver which originally allegedly inspired Claude Michel Schoenberg to adapt Les Miserables, Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables, to the stage in the first place because he saw the character of the Artful Dodger run out and sing. Consider yourself. In that moment, he thought this could be Gavroche. And it gave him the sense that this kind of a bleak and large story could also work in a musical context. Now, they have both seen success under the same producer, Sir Cameron McIntosh, and I think with this production, he is trying to build an Oliver with the Les Mis treatment that could go on to be as ongoingly successful over decades. I think Sir Cameron is now in the phase of his career where he is less concerned with cultivating entirely new things and more preoccupied with, you know, just making sure his theatrical garden looks nice, as it were. You've got Phantom over there doing great business. You've got Les Mis over there doing great business, approaching its 40th anniversary. And then what are we going to Put next to Les Mis at the Gielgud Theatre. We're going to put a production of Oliver and we're going to give it artwork that is strikingly familiar of the young Cosette. Black and white face artwork that's at the Sondheim Theatre. So when you look down Shaftesbury Avenue, you see them next to each other. Oliver and Cosette. Oliver and Les Mis. I think you see it in the marketing, but I think you also see it in the staging of this production as well. We will discuss that, however, when we get into the next section. Before we do, let's talk a little bit about the material. Now, as I mentioned, this was my first time seeing the show on stage, so there were lots of songs I wasn't familiar with because I had only seen the brilliant 1968 film version. And what I loved about the songs like that's yous Funeral and I Shall Scream, with which I was less familiar, is they are so brilliantly Cockney and of the era and music hall. It's really very musical, inspired in those kind of rousing songs. Lyla Bart masterfully engages these three different musical moods, one of which is this lively and joy, jovial and uproarious quality in spite of bleak circumstances. Songs like Un Papa, songs like It's a Fine Life, Heck, even Consider Yourself probably falls into that bracket. You also have the deliciously dark music, such as the introduction for Bill Sykes, such as that's yous Funeral, moments that feel genuinely sinister and insidious. Even Boy For Sale towards the beginning has this very sort of sorrowful quality to it. Then you have, and this is classic Dickens, these pure and again, Les Miserablesque outpourings of love and longing and, you know, this last shred of optimism, feeling these pure souls with these big hearts singing these moving ballads, just desperately clinging to what little they have in the world. Such as your Where Is Love? Such as you're as Long As He Needs Me, of course, probably the best remembered song in the show. But then even saying that is a discredit to so many of the other brilliant songs in this show. You're listening through to the whole thing and you're thinking, God, that's a great song. Oh, that's a great song. I mean, food, glorious food, as the opener alone is wonderful. Then you have Oliver, then you have Consider yourself. You have got to pick a pocket or two. You have, reviewing the situation, a brilliantly written character song. You have Oompapa. You have who Will Buy? Could we talk about who Will Buy? I Mean it exists dramatically only to establish the slight difference in the world in which Oliver now wakes up having been taken to the home of a wealthy gentleman looking out of this window and seeing this very different side of London to one that he had previously encountered as he sees people selling their wares around the fancy neighborhoods. And this is like classic quintessential musical theater, right? Because Oliver hears all of these different sellers touting their various offerings and saying, knives, knives to grind, any knives to grind and ripe strawberries, ripe who will buy my sweet red roses, etc. And as he hears them all overlapping and it becomes this cacophony, the musical interpretation of that is for it to become this beautifully built harmony that then turns into this sensational company number. It's just. It's just exquisite writing. And more than half a century later, I think this still probably has to sit within the top 10 of the best ever written British musicals. Maybe the top five, maybe the top three. Three. It's that good. Am I put to you? Has any other Dickensian adaptation ever really taken over the novel itself in terms of what has the strongest identity? When you think Oliver Twist, you think of this probably before you think of the novel. All of which is to say that the show itself is a rich masterpiece. Let's talk about why this production lives up to that. So this revival of the show, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne with co direction from Jean Pierre Van der Spuy and design from Les Brotherston, does, as I mentioned before, feel a little bit like the Les Misification of Oliver. And I think that's very compatible for this material. In the run up to this production, the creative spoke about the idea behind it being to not just strip it back, but to boil it down to something a little more essential than the grandeur of. Of previous productions like the one at the massive Theatre Royal Drury Lane or you know, the scale of the film. And this truly is an Oliver which feels harsher and bleaker and more dramatic and more intense for that level of focus. It is still an expansive and thorough and wonderful looking set that incorporates some subtle video screen elements right at the very back, but has entire full set pieces and a multi level set and walkways spilling out into. Into the boxes of the auditoriums and various different levels and a bridge that elevates children up into the ceiling and a revolve. But it's the darkness of the thing that I was really struck by. All covered in this dense fog and just. I keep saying bleak, but it really was just bleak and miserable and great. For that. From the very beginning in the workhouse, through the scenes with the sour berries, even when we get to Fagin's gang, you feel acutely the danger of Oliver's circumstances and of Fagin's circumstances and of Bill's and of Nancy's. Everyone feels that little bit more precarious. No one feels entirely in control. This is an Oliver filled with characters living in abject poverty and on the knife's edge, as it were. From that arises this fearful quality in each of them. From that arises this tension. From that tension arises this danger, this drama and this darkness. There is a brooding and nefarious quality to this production that I just love, as usual. I'm going to talk about the performances a little bit later, but I do want to talk about the casting approach, because we don't have a small army of tiny children in this one. We have a handful of very young performers, but then a sort of an additional roster of teenage performers, including the actor playing the Artful Dodger. He sings consider yourself down the octave. He sings it with a broken voice, which serves to divorce him a little. From Oliver, you can tell that he is a little older. He feels the oldest and the wisest and the most in the know, the most knowing of Fagin's gang, further contrasting Oliver as this tiny, very vulnerable child who is not entirely like all of the other boys there. Again, it feels precarious. It feels dangerous. Bill Sykes and Nancy, meanwhile, feel particularly young in this production, and it feels like they graduated the Fagan School of pickpocketing and Victorian crime not that many years previously. It really does feel like Bill Sykes was one of Fagan's boys, which is alluded to in the material. And there's a brilliant moment where Fagin mentions the artful daughter going on to become like Bill Sykes, and he is visibly disturbed by this because there is clearly so much more of Fagan in him. But we'll talk about that more when we talk about the characterization, and I think without making too big a point of it, that really depicts the cycle of crime and poverty and where the Bill Sykes came from in the first place and draws this through line from Oliver to the Artful Dodger to Bill and Nancy. Bet Nancy's friend is characterized as being much younger than her on stage, and you feel like that is what she is going to graduate into and become. There's a sense of that as well. Let's talk about Matthew Bourne's work specifically now, with the staging, with the direction, with the choreography. It looks so phenomenal. It is so light on its feet. The traffic around the space is brilliant. It just feels like London. We have these moments of glorious chaos. We have these moments of camaraderie. We have these moments of loneliness and space. We feel the threat of it all. Towards the end of the second act, there's this wonderful use of the revolve as this bridge is turning around, as there's this secret meeting that is supposed to happen that gets interrupted with deadly consequences. I do feel like I need to talk about this. So if you don't want spoilers for the plot of if anyone still doesn't know what happens at the end of Oliver, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. But Nancy is trying to deliver Oliver as she has promised to, without entirely breaking her word to Bill. She feels hugely conflicted about this, and Bill intercepts her and is so betrayed by this that he murders her. But in this production, there is in all of their relationship this passionate, uncomfortable intimacy. It really feels like a more honest study of domestic abuse and like emotional toxicity and violence than perhaps has been seen before in the depiction of these characters. Rather than beating her to death with a weapon, he strangles her with his bare hands while begging her not to look him in the eye. But it's still just as brutal, just as difficult to watch, just as unsettling. It also feels a lot more visceral, a lot more real. This doesn't feel like melodrama. This feels like real domestic abuse, the likes of which are sadly ongoing. Oliver watches in the shadows on this bridge set that is turning and turning and turning around. The one moment I didn't think that lived up necessarily to the brilliance of all of this may have been who Will Buy? Just because I think it's such a wonderful number and there's so much that you could do with it, and it can become such a huge company showstopper. And it was still wonderful to hear the song. And I think it was very smartly staged in terms of making it about travel and about traffic. And it was very skillfully done in terms of how everything was presented. I just wanted a little more dance. And this is Matthew Bourne. And who Will Buy is often the most obvious choice for a Showstopper. This, interestingly, is a production where almost every other number feels like a showstopper. The roaring response that came from this audience. There are so many really fantastically staged numbers in the show. What they do with. I'd do anything. A lot of the familiar staging of Nancy and Dodger together in the like fake improvised cart going along. And then to sail a boat across the stage. It's so whimsically put together. But reviewing the situation became a showstopper. It's a Fine Life became a showstopper. Whereas Love became a showstopper. So many really brilliant songs. Consider Yourself was huge. The response to Consider Yourself, the joy and the comedy of that number. It was sensational. I have to talk to you about the lighting design before I forget to. By Paulie Constable and Ben Jacobs. My single favorite creative element of this production. I think the way that it felt moonlit. The difference between this harsh and oppressive overhead lighting that they used for many more of the grim and intense scenes. And like the early moments in the workhouse and the funeral parlor, in contrast to Oliver waking up at the beginning of who Will Buy and these warm lights that we hadn't seen before in the show flooding in from the side as if through these large windows in a safer and a cleaner part of the city. Throughout the show. The entire design team worked so well together to make it feel grimy and dirty and dismal. Which is exactly what I want with Dickens and with Oliver towards the very end. The last image that we get is Fagin walking to the back of the stage with Dodger after they've just had this very tender moment of reunion where Dodger has gone back to him and repeated the first line. We hear Dodger saying in the show. And they have embraced. And then they walk together towards the back of the set and there is this glow across the London skyline. You see familiar buildings. And it's indicative both of a city on fire. They are abandoning everything that they have known. The game is up, as Fagan has told the boys. And a mob has chased Bill Sykes to his eventual death. It feels like a city on fire, but it's also this sense of a sunrise and of a new beginning. And the show is so conservative, with real light and with real moments of hope, because it does feel necessarily like an Oliver in this world of darkness. I've spoken a little bit already about Les Brothers brilliant set design. I want to talk additionally, however, about the costume design. They look gorgeous. The attention to detail is exceptional. I love the way that Fagin has been costumed in this version, incorporating a little more Jewish cultural heritage. I love this version of Nancy's dress. I love that you can see the relationship between what the boys are wearing, what Dodger is wearing and what Bill Sykes is wearing, and this pronounced class difference between the few affluent characters we actually meet on stage. And even the likes of Mr. Bumble and Widow Corny, who are still trying to grab any bit of money that they can because their circumstances are not prosperous either. Needless to say, it is an absolutely remarkable, compelling, dramatic, vital production of an absolute musical classic. Let me tell you about the wonderful performances in this particular production. Now, I'm going to begin with Kian Eagle Service, who was portraying Oliver at the Press night performance, which I saw. They have a rotating cast of three performers playing the role of Oliver as part of a collection of young performers. It was actually very sweet. On the Press Night performance, they had all of the young performers who were not on that night were all gathered together wearing little suit jackets, and they spent the interval going around and singing the songs from the show. Speaking of singing, key in, Eagle Service has the most incredible voice. I've actually seen him on stage a handful of times already. I saw him as Michael Banks in Mary Poppins. I saw him in the Harvey Milk oratorio I Am Harvey Milk by Andrew Lipper. I saw him as Gustave in Love Never Dies in concert, and I have never heard him sound this sensational. He sang Where Is Love? Which is normally a song that gets by on its sweetness, right? Like you hear a young boy singing in a treble register, where is Love? And it's thin, but it's adorable, and everyone loves it and cries and it's very moving and heartbreaking. And he belted that song out like I have never heard before. Like it was someone like you from Jekyll and Hyde. Like it was his act one, as long as he needs me. The vocal strength and the power behind those notes that he was hitting at the end, the placement to go and do that straight tone to vibrato thing, the technique that this child has is uncanny. And he's a terrific actor to go along with that as well. I believe he's also a former Gavroche in Les Miserables. I hope he goes on to have a thrilling career as an adult performer. We see that for a handful of these young stars, but it's really a subtle emotional journey that Oliver goes on. He is constantly thrust into these new worlds and environments where he is, to a certain extent, taken care of. But the degree to which this is genuine increases throughout the show. And for him to be able to play those differences, for him to be able to play, you know, a genuine affection for Fagin, but then, you know, a huge preference for the world that he encounters subsequently, and for him to be able to show that subtlety when he then goes Back to Fagin, when he's taken away again. It's really challenging stuff and he did it so, so well. There is a subtlety and a nuance to his performance that understandably, you don't always see from these young actors. He's remarkable, as is the show's other star, Simon Lipkin as Fagan. Simon Lipkin, who may be one of the most versatile performers we're currently enjoying on the West End stage, he is also a magician. He uses a lot of that sleight of hand as well as that very presentational, charming, charismatic quality in his portrayal of Fagin. He is also a Jewish actor, bringing a little more cultural authenticity to this role. His is a performance of really winning showmanship, brilliant comedic asides. It's almost like he's doing stand up as Fagin and it really works in the context of this production. But there is also this fear and this selfishness and this weakness and this sort of human failing beneath it all. And he, like Nancy, grapples with his conscience over the course of the show. It feels a little familiar of the engineer in Miss Saigon, but his performance of Reviewing the Situation, he turned into a four act play of a musical monologue. The physicality that he brought to it as he was getting increasingly anxious and heightened and spirited, he had this little physical affectation where one of his hands would tremble throughout the show. And it was sort of choreographed in this number in such a way. And it became indicative of his longing for wealth and his penchant for hoarding it. This miserly quality, which I appreciated being navigated in what felt like a more minimally anti Semitic way than we have previously seen. But with so many brilliant, really well known company numbers like Consider Yourself, like who Will Buy. It's pretty staggering that Reviewing the Situation could get the most explosive applause at the show's opening night. But that's exactly what it got. Pretty close. Behind that, however, was Shanae Holmes rendition of as Long As He Needs Me. Let's talk about her take on Nancy, a hugely iconic character. And what I like about Sinead's performance, I mean, I mean the standout thing is the vocal delivery. And she has always been a performer who can really sell a song on stage. And not just because of her extraordinary voice, but also because of how much passion and emotion she really breathes into a lyric. There has been occasionally when I've heard her before, this slightly indulgent quality, which with the paces that Oliver has conducted, there is little room for. I've never heard her singing this quickly Before, I think. And there were a couple of moments in the very fast sections of It's a Fine Life when she sing Let the pruse look down and let's let the wide world Frown. And I swear it felt like she was just trying to keep up with the thing. But once we get into as Long As He Needs Me and it's reprise. Her particular brand of passion and delivery is such a winning combination with this song, this iconic song. And the characterization really worked for me as well because she felt that little bit spiteful, also that little bit selfish. When Bill presents her with pearls and he's coming back at the beginning, the first time that we meet her, and then Fagin tries to take them from her and she resents Fagin coming in and interrupting them. Despite the very warm relationship that she has with the young boys and how sort of maternal she gets around them, she does still feel like a very young, naive woman. And Nancy is often worldly, which can be difficult to reconcile with the way she stands by Bill's side. But I think that little bit of naivety and that little journey of self discovery that Shanae finds throughout the course of the show really makes sense for Nancy. Here then you have Aaron Sidwell's Bill Sykes. And again, there is a naivety, there is a youthfulness and a foolishness to it. He has learned this brutality and he has learned how to get his way using this demeanor and using this almost cult of personality sense of his presence, which he sings about in the song My Name when he talks about it. Striking fear into the hearts of those who would dare lay a hand on his woman, etc. We see him deploying this violent streak in the show, but we see this hurt and this fear behind it, particularly in the moment of violence with Nancy. It comes from this place of passion and indignation and authority where he feels like this radicalized young man failed by an impoverished London and a flawed class system. He doesn't feel like arbitrary villain Bill Sykes and he doesn't feel nearly as sullen as Bill has in the past. He feels very attentive, very alive, and all the more dangerous for that very threatening now. Billy Jenkins plays the artful Dodger and there is so much winning comedy and characterization in his approach here. I think he's going to be a really big star. I think he is so fantastic for this role. His facial expressions and his physicality. He's such a natural born geezer. He can play the younger qualities of Dodger and the innocents when he needs to. But he can also feel older, that little bit more aware of what's happening. That moment with him. And Fagin at the end is so perfectly played. But as is, as I mentioned before, that brilliant expression on his face when Fagin says he's going to be a right Bill Sykes one day. And you can see how terrified that makes him and how reluctant he is for that to be his future and how aware he is of what that would mean for him. And I actually think this show is perfectly cast down to the last in this ensemble, including Philip Franks as Mr. Brownlow, who is so delightfully sincere, including Jamie Burkett in particular in the first act as Mr. Is sour berry. Stephen Matthews gets a lot of big laughs as Mr. Sourberry Dr. Grimwig. But the real supporting standouts, Katie Secombe and Oscar Conan Mori as widow Corney and Mr. Bumble. And I am delighted to see Oscar Conlon Mori getting to be on this stage, getting this kind of a role and an opportunity. I've been singing his praises for many years. He's extraordinarily talented. The richness of his voice we don't talk about nearly enough. Because he's such a winning comedian, he's such a hysterically funny comic actor. He gets to deploy all of his comic skill set in this show. Getting so many laughs with his physicality as he is. Pratt falling as he. I mean, it's a brilliant double act with him and Katie Seecombe forming this slightly awkward later in life romance that turns quite quickly to distinct. Stayed initially lusting after and then shrieking at each other, but his version of Mr. Bumble, very familiar with Beedle Bamford in Swingy Todd and kind of performatively acting above his station with this very forced, posh accent. A lot of the genius here lies in Katie Secombe's relentless commitment to character and Oscar's ability to get a laugh with the slightest little detail and embellishment and affectation and glance and syllable. He's so, so funny. They're wonderful together. I'd call them the cherry on top of the glorious food which makes up this production. But it's full of cherries. There are so many exceptional details. It's just. It's what I call a really perfect version of Oliver. This is exactly what I want this material to look like, to, to sound like, to feel like I was emotionally caught up with it. I found it gripping and compelling and devastating and rousing. There was thunderous applause. So well deserved for its opening night performance. I hope it continues to get that for years. To come. I hope this becomes a huge long running success because it has the capacity to like a cabaret which came in a few years ago. This has a well known enough title that this could become another staple of the West End and I do feel like that is Sir Cameron Mackintosh's intention with this production and it's one I would be more than happy to go and see again and again and again. Please Sir Cameron Mackintosh, I want some more. Those have been my thoughts about Oliver at the Gielgood Theatre. I dare say there is more than I could say about this production, but I am more than likely to go back and tell you about it all over again. I am very excited to have this among the rest of the West End shows and I'm also very excited to hear what you all thought of it as well. Let me know in the comments section down below if you have already had the privilege of seeing this show. Thank you for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube, follow me on podcast platforms, or seek me out across the rest of the musical theatre Internet for more reviews and theatrical content coming very soon. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.