Review Roundup: Did OLIVER! Leave Audiences Wanting More?

Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Lionel Bart’s iconic musical, OLIVER!, which he has fully reconceived with director and choreographer Matthew Bourne, has now opened at the Gielgud Theatre.

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 and Philip Franks (The Rocky Horror Show, Witness for the Prosecution) as Mr Brownlow.

With a 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 vividly brings to life Dickens’ ever-popular story of the boy who asked for more.

What did the critics think?

Photo Credit: Johan Persson

Aliya Al-Hassan, BroadwayWorld: Simon Lipkin has built up a solid body of work over the years, but his Fagin is surely a career-defining moment. Much younger, more vibrant and channelling something of Captain Jack Sparrow, Lipkin conveys the character with real knowingness. He is very comedic, with deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, but we also see an unsure and lonely man behind the mask.

Marianka Swain, London Theatre: Among the wonderfully Dickensian eccentrics and grotesques, vivid characters all, are Oscar Conlon-Morrey’s preening (and often show-stealing) Mr Bumble, Katy Secombe as his eager paramour Widow Corney, and Stephen Matthews and Jamie Birkett’s creepily gothic Sowerberrys – another couple made in heaven, or perhaps hell. Billy Jenkins is an excellent Artful Dodger, with his cheeky-chappie swagger and dynamic moves, and Isabelle Methven is a sweetly gentle Bet.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: Brotherston’s set of gantries and iron stairways turns on a revolve, emphasising the bustle and vastness of the city but allowing vivid vignettes to emerge within it; Bourne’s choreography sets the boys in the orphanage scrubbing the stage in fierce unison until the moment of frozen suspense when Oliver dares to ask for more. Later, in routines such as It’s A Fine Life and Consider Yourself, their movement is both fierce (with beaten cups and feet) and childlike (as they imitate horses). Everything adds to the telling of the story in the most compressed and clearest way.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: Much of the show’s capacity to hold an audience enraptured rests on the tender shoulders of the juvenile lead. It’s hats off once again (and thrown to the rafters) to Cian Eagle-Service, affecting in Chichester and no less so here. Doubtless the three other lads sharing the role are top-notch too, but this 12-year-old’s expressive face, delicate frame and searing solos mean you couldn’t ask for more, sir. When he finally beams on being taken under the wing of Billy Jenkins’s swaggering Dodger, it’s like winter vanishing.

Adam Bloodworth, City A.M.: Director and choreographer Matthew Bourne has surely opened the musical of the year with his astounding dance sequences. It’s especially the ensemble numbers that are sheer staggering feats of imagination, offering insane levels of detail to bring Victorian London back to life. You forget that there’s a banger literally every five minutes in Lionel Bart’s original score, and Bourne has crafted frenzied, stage-filling brilliance for Food Glorious Food, Oom-Pah-Pah and You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket or Two, somehow finding new life in sequences already famed for their energy.

Neil Fisher, The Times: And Fagin himself? Actors have fumbled for decades with the Jewish tics of the role — get rid or embrace? — but Simon Lipkin’s wonderfully reimagined portrayal goes full kosher and makes something really remarkable (and very funny) out of the old vagabond. Part lost soul, part sad clown, this Fagin counts his jewels in desperation, not miserly greed (“who’s going to look after me in my old age?” speaks as much today as it ever did) and with his show-stopping Reviewing the Situation, Lipkin captures both the plight of a traumatised immigrant — and of anyone trying to lead a good life in a dark and devious world.

Sam Marlowe, The Stage: 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.

Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut: The biggest flaw, though, is one that’s haunted the show for decades: Olivier himself is just pretty bland. I’m not going to single out the child actor who was on when I saw it, because I think the problem lies firstly with Bart and secondly with the direction. But our hero is a wide eyed, improbably well-spoken young man who travels through life with such monumental innocence that it’s never even clear here that he’s aware Fagin et al are criminals. It’s a demanding role to give a tween, but the amount resting on his small shoulders has always been a weakness of the show. And clearly it’s not something Mackintosh is desperately bothered about fixing. And why would he? Now booking until next March, the West End’s most successful producer has a hit on his hands with Oliver! Again.

Daz Gale , All That Dazzles : Produced and reconceived by producer Cameron Mackintosh with director and choreographer Matthew Bourne, this production of Oliver! manages to retain the charm and essence of the story while bringing its own twist, introducing new elements into the mix. Never so extreme that it feels at odds with the original, instead it creates a take on the story that feels simultaneously fresh and familiar.

Chris Selman, Gay Times: his is a superb revival of Oliver! – it doesn’t shy away from the story’s darker moments, and a handful of scenes are genuinely moving, while key themes of class and social inequality land well. There’s a real nuance to these performances, showcasing a depth of character rarely seen in big, all-singing, all-dancing musicals. It all adds up to one of the most impressive pieces of theatre we’ve seen in a long, long time. An absolute triumph.

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times: It’s been billed as a “reconceived” production of Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical but it’s certainly not as radical as some of Bourne’s other work. Rather, Bourne and producer Cameron Mackintosh walk a canny line between the upbeat Cockney carry-on in the musical and the darkness of Dickens’ novel, paying good heed to both as they unpack Oliver’s story with nimble dexterity. Raucous big numbers such as “Oom-Pah-Pah” and “Consider Yourself” come blazing across the footlights, Bourne’s witty, exuberant choreography filling the stage with music-hall zest.

Susannah Clapp, The Observer: 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.

Dominic Maxwell, The Sunday Times: Where Mackintosh has most visibly rung the changes, very smartly, is with Fagin. Too mean and he’s the antisemitic stereotype. Too cuddly and you’re taking out what tension there is. Simon Lipkin, who has been with the show since it began in Chichester last summer, is a serious pleasure. He is vigorous enough literally to toss an urchin out of the way, but vulnerable enough for us to feel for him without anyone saying: “Hey, amoral ringleaders of child pickpocketing gangs have their own truth, y’know.”

Fiona Mountford, The i Paper: The first half hour in particular is a dangerously low-fi grind, with the action coming over as laboured and effortful and the exaggerated working-class London accents a trial by glottal stop. The threat to young Oliver (at the performance I saw the part was played by the excellent Raphael Korniets, suitably pinched, pale and pure of voice) comes from the pantomime school of emotion.

Average Rating: 88.6%