Oliver!

(seen at the afternoon preview performance on 4th January 2025)

From the programme notes, the monkey was amazed to learn that the show’s producer, Cameron Mackintosh, also encountered “Oliver!” first time from the balcony at the Noel Coward (New / Albery - whichever it was back then) theatre. 

The monkey, being younger, first saw the Mackintosh revival. There the similarities end. Young Cameron was enthralled by the show for life. The monkey has never particularly cared for it at all...

... until now.

This is an outstanding, all-cylinders firing, jet black atmospheric revision. Matthew Bourne and Sir C have found the missing link, turning a childish romp into a fully adult dark chocolate, bitter as 90% cocoa and equally satisfying.

Gone is the opening moppet parade. The 1994 windswept mother is still there, but the first number is now offspring of “Annie” and “Les Misérables.” Fewer workhouse brats, picking oakum and looking starved. One rather overdoes it (for the whole show) but is young and will learn.

From there, all the corruption and good that was Victorian London as recorded by Dickens, unfolds. We feel it in the Lez Brotherston set, linking the venue's side boxes to stage with twisting staircases, a bridge (from the Mackintosh 'Miz' warehouse, maybe – the lights are oddly familiar), sliding room walls and revolve putting us where we need to be.

The intimacy of the Gielgud cooks the period feel to perfection under the heat of Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs shadowy lighting. Even the bouncy “Consider Yourself” and brawling “Oom-Pah-Pah” are smoke-tinged as they should be.

Greater and more inspired tweaks emerge as the tale unfolds. Very best of all, Aaron Sidwell and Shanay Holmes seal the monkey’s admiration for the new piece with a tremendous meeting of Bill and Nancy in “My Name!” Henceforward, there is no other means of staging it.

Sidwell finds the calculating brute. Holmes an unbreakable spirit in a sadly all too breakable body.

As Fagin, Simon Lipkin too does it his way, dropping a couple of “f-bombs” as he goes. Freestyling, perhaps on the edge even of dementia, and hinting at more than business attachments to his gang, it is a breathtaking and unmissable performance. To find new life in “Reviewing the Situation” is an achievement justifying his several rest breaks.

Using an adult, Billy Jenkins, as The Artful Dodger, allows the show to build a deeper character than a revolving cast of children in the role might. This Dodger is a child yet, trying to survive on wit and acquired knowledge alone. Almost succeeding, and revealing more about his relationship with Fagin than we might suppose.

We get an outstanding supporting cast thrown in, sometimes literally. Stephen Matthews finds avaricious Mrs Sowerberry rather than the usual unimaginative abuser. Jamie Birkett is the neat foil, and both play off each other wonderfully later as Dr Grimwig and retainer Mrs Bedwin.

Philip Franks as kindly Mr Brownlow is an unforgettable gentleman, Bethan Keens and Callum Hudson as Charlotte and Noah Claypole memorable spoilt brats with a revoltingly amusing bacon scene.

Their grown-up equivalent Mr Bumble and Widow Corney – Oscar Conlon-Morrey and Katy Secombe - are equally grotesque, deservingly unhappily married and demoted by the end.

With trinkets hidden in the stage front (have a look, if you are in the stalls), a touching mixture of other Bart songs during the interval and a lush orchestra under Graham Hurman, no expense – financial, intellectual or creative is spared to deliver a show you will want to see at your pleasure, and will last your whole life long.

And remember, this was written by a monkey with a life-long antipathy to the whole thing... so buy a ticket.