Oliver! – Gielgud Theatre

Simon Lipkin in Oliver! at the Gielgud Theatre, London. Pictures: Johan Persson

Oliver! continues at the Gielgud Theatre, London, booking until until 29 March 2026.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

‘Reviewing the Situation’, as Fagin does when contemplating whether it’s time to give up training young rascals to “pick a pocket or two” and go legit, we have, in this lock-stock-and-barrel transfer of Oliver! from Chichester to the West End, a marriage made in heaven between arguably Charles Dickens’ finest work, indubitably Lionel Bart’s – so many instantly recognisable songs – and the supreme Matthew Bourne as director-choreographer.

Stir in some stirring performances from a cast that gives it absolutely everything and a rich, wonderful score lovingly interpreted by a 12-strong orchestra under conductor Graham Hurman and it is obviously going to be the “whopping great hit” it was always destined to be when launched at Chichester last summer.

So why wasn’t I blown away by it? Even Oliver’s soulful ‘Where Is Love?’, one of Bart’s best, and Nancy’s heart-wrenching ‘As Long As He Needs Me’, a strange reaction to her vicious lover Bill Sikes knocking her down, couldn’t bring a tear to my eye, though not in any way the fault of young Cian Eagle-Service and scene-stealing Shanay Holmes.

Don’t get me wrong: I liked it well enough and as a musical sanitised and toned down from its classic-novel origins it still brings home the way orphans and the poverty-stricken were used and abused in Victorian England without going in too heavy on the physical violence which Dickens, with his social conscience, was ever keen to lecture.

Shanay Holmes (far right) and the cast of Oliver!

But I wanted a bit more drama as a counter-balance to the humour created by the “odd couple”, the loudmouth workhouse manager Mr Bumble and his partner Widow Corney, another nasty piece of work, who react to Oliver’s rebellious request for a second helping of gruel by despatching him to work for Mr Sowerberry, the local undertaker.

They are to Oliver! what the Thénardiers are to Les Mis and here played to the hilt by Oscar Conlon-Morrey (hilarious and a great voice too) and Katy Secombe, a memorable Madame Thénardier in her time and a national treasure.

I also wanted Aaron Sidwell’s Bill Sikes to be even more malevolent – I remember how terrified I was by the great Robert Newton’s villain in David Lean’s tremendous 1948 movie – and for this Nancy to be a bit more vulnerable to make her big numbers more affecting. No problem with the Holmes voice though – that’s terrific.

The last time I saw Oliver!, at Grange Park Opera in 2016, Simon Lipkin was a sinister Sikes. This time he is an almost loveable Fagin, a naughty hippy in his coat of many colours and with his own spin on the part, far removed from the Jewishness, maybe deliberately so, of Ron Moody’s famed Fagin in the original West End production and again on Broadway in the 1980s. It is a colossal performance. Lipkin not only commands the stage but might well command a few awards as well.

A big shoutout to Stephen Matthews, funny as both undertaker Sowerberry and especially as Dr Grimwig in a riotous sick-bed scene with the cheeky Oliver who has an answer for everything when the doctor tries to nail down his illness.

When Holmes and Billy Jenkins’ Artful Dodger got together with Fagin and the Gang for ‘I’d Do Anything’, my mind went back 17 years to the Lloyd Webber-inspired TV talent show of the same name to unearth a Nancy for his 2009 Oliver! revival. You must remember the one – Jodie Prenger won it from Jessie Buckley, Samantha Barks was third and Rachel Tucker fourth. What phenomenal careers that quartet have had and are still having!

Buckley was offered the role of Nancy understudy to Prenger but turned it down, went on to sing with Judi Dench in A Little Night Music, went to RADA to hone her acting skills and emerged to do Shakespeare with Jude Law in the West End, play the first Sally Bowles at the Kit Kat Club opposite Eddie Redmayne (the performance earned her an Olivier Award), and was Oscar nominated for her supporting role in the movie The Lost Daughter. Missing out on Nancy certainly had its compensations.

One more link to that epic TV talent show: another I’d Do Anything contender was Jamie Birkett, who takes on the roles of Mrs Sowerberry and Mrs Bedwin here and in the latter part makes the most of her one sad solo, the reprise of ‘Where Is Love?’

Enormously impressive is the ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ tavern tableau at the start of Act II with all the men supping their grog and the women raucously flirting, one of them even slurping a drink from the barrel. It is a wonderful Dickensian scene created by Bourne and his co-director Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy, and not the only one.

I was looking out for Sikes’ ferocious hound Bullseye, whose image has been lodged in my memory ever since I read Oliver Twist. Described by Dickens as “a white shaggy dog with his face scratched and torn in 20 places” and regularly kicked and beaten by his evil owner, he doesn‘t appear but we hear his bark though thankfully we don’t see his bite.

What strikes me most about Oliver! is the volume of truly first-rate songs, all of which have a revered place in the history of British musical theatre. I expect you can reel them off: ‘Food, Glorious Food’, ‘Where is Love?’ ‘Consider Yourself’, ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’, ‘It’s A Fine Life’, ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’, ‘As Long As He Needs Me’, ‘Who Will Buy?’, ‘Reviewing the Situation’ and the title number. Af least ten absolute bangers. Would that any of the new musicals hitting the West End had even half that number – Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be!

Jeremy Chapman