Lionel Bart's Oliver! Off-Broadway Reviews

The only challenge this marvelous Oliver! look-see offers a dazed—make that, dazzled—reviewer is where to start piling on the encomia. Probably makes sense to start with the focal Charles Dickens figures, 9-year-old Oliver Twist (Benjamin Pajak), here described as 11, and the larcenous Fagin (Raúl Esparza). Because their performances enhance the revival equally, the only fair way to approach this is alphabetically.

But deBessonet’s entertaining and beautifully sung production, featuring terrific turns by Lilli Cooper as the proud doxy Nancy and Raúl Esparza as the criminal den leader Fagin - as well as a touching one by Benjamin Pajak in the title role - is at this point still too muddy to be convincing as sociology, let alone drama