Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Lionel Bart’s iconic musical, Oliver!, which he has fully reconceived with director and choreographer Matthew Bourne, will open in London at the end of the year.
Oliver! will begin performances at Gielgud Theatre on Saturday 14 December 2024.
The cast includes Simon Lipkin (Guys and Dolls, Avenue Q) as Fagin, Shanay Holmes (Miss Saigon, The Bodyguard) as Nancy, Aaron Sidwell (Henry VI, Wicked) as Bill Sikes, Billy Jenkins (Les Misérables, BBC’s Dodger) as the Artful Dodger and Philip Franks (The Rocky Horror Show, Witness for the Prosecution) as Mr Brownlow.
With a sensational score, including Food Glorious Food, Consider Yourself, You’ve Got to Pick-a-Pocket or Two, I’d Do Anything, Oom Pah Pah, As Long As He Needs Me and many more, the Olivier, Tony and Oscar-winning masterpiece vividly brings to life Dickens’ ever-popular story of the boy who asked for more.
__Access performances__
Audio described: Sat 26 April 2025, 2:30pm
Simon Lipkin’s Fagin, a rackety con man with a flair for theatrics, is a scene-stealer, his carapace of ruthlessness, hardened by decades of survival and self-preservation, occasionally cracking to allow some tenderness to seep out, as when he puts the bewildered Oliver to bed at his den’s fireside. Some of his vaudevillian embellishments – particularly in the panicked reckoning of Reviewing the Situation – are a distraction: gags that go for easy laughs when we’d rather engage more fully with Fagin’s dilemma. But it’s unarguably a hugely charismatic performance.
Superb lighting by Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs shows the action as if through Oliver’s eyes: a harsh glitter of grey over the workhouse; a deceptive golden glow for Fagin’s den. Lez Brotherston’s busy brown Victorian stock design is unsurprising but efficient. Movement, vocal and visual, is constant: urchins being thrown like parcels; solos blending into choruses. Oscar Conlon-Morrey is a magnificent Bumble – the “chubby hubby” whose voice shakes the stage; Billy Jenkins, as bendy in body as in morals, is lithe and blithe as the Artful Dodger, his jauntiness dipping only when Bill is referred to as his role model: the bad father.
1960 | West End |
Original London Production West End |
1963 | Broadway |
Broadway Production Broadway |
1965 | Broadway |
Return Engagement [Broadway] Broadway |
1976 | Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
Paper Mill Production Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
1979 | Regional (US) |
Regional Revival Regional (US) |
1984 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1994 | Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
Paper Mill Production Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
1994 | West End |
London Revival West End |
2009 | West End |
London Revival West End |
2011 | UK Tour |
UK Tour UK Tour |
2018 | East Haddam, CT (Regional) |
Goodspeed Musicals Revival East Haddam, CT (Regional) |
2023 | Off-Broadway |
New York City Center Encores! Production Off-Broadway |
West End |
West End |
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2024 | West End |
West End |
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