Oliver! – Leeds Playhouse

Steve Furst with Fagin’s Gang in Oliver! at Leeds Playhouse. Picture: Alastair Muir

Oliver! continues at the Quarry Theatre, Leeds Playhouse until 27 January 2024.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Unlike A Christmas Carol, Oliver! is not strictly one of the regular seasonal signposts hoisted at this time to celebrate the durability of human goodness. But Lionel Bart took Dickens’ exposé of child labour and cruelty and turned it into a jaunty East End romp which, musically at least, at Leeds fits the bill for a Yuletide pick me up.

Pantomime is offering enough fairy tales elsewhere. So how far does a director of Oliver! go about honouring the grim purpose of Dickens’ original shocker, yet give full rein to book, music and lyrics of such sunny swagger? Firstly, James Brining (the venue’s artistic director and chief executive) has assembled a fine cast with some powerful singers as well as actors relishing lavishly drawn character roles.

In the relative order of villainy, Steve Furst as Fagin is outstanding as the sinuously cunning but ultimately endearing gang master of the magpie minors. His posturing lesson in how to relieve victims of their valuables in ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’ is a joy. But it’s his India Rubber Man contortions as the law closes in that inspires a show-stopping performance of ‘Reviewing the Situation’. 

Undeniably, the character of Fagin does little to extinguish the old stereotype of the Jewish chancer – even Dickens himself tried to modify the impression in the latter part of his novel – but Jewish East Ender Bart was clearly not tempted to underwrite such a compelling comic figure.

No, if it’s malevolence and menace you’re looking for, Chris Bennett tops the villainy order as  the stony-faced Bill Sikes. From the moment he marches across the high metal walkway and stomps into Fagin’s den, with the cold eyed stare of gangland ‘muscle’, a proper sense of dread fills the round stage. There’s no glossing either of the seething misogyny in the character nor the off-stage terrifying audibility of the fate he inflicts on the hopelessly loyal Nancy. 

Moreover modern sensibilities have to lay low when Jenny Fitzpatrick’s sorely used Nancy delivers a brilliant, heart-rending ‘As Long As He Needs Me’, a song one suspects might undergo some sentiment-tinkering in the hands of a contemporary lyricist. Often of course Bart’s songs are exclamations of joyful defiance of a desperate world of cruelty and violence. The roots back to early music hall chin-up merriment are never stronger than in ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ or ‘Consider Yourself’.

While larger-than-life adult characters dominate, young Nicholas Teixeira gives a touching portrait of Oliver, augmented by a fine singing voice, but Felix Holt as the Artful Dodger surely has the most fun as his strutting mentor. Minal Patel plays Mr Bumble as a saloon bar blowhard, duly earning the laughs together with Widow Corney (Rosie Ede).

In a high energy production, Brining is clearly not ready to sprinkle a whole cloud of Christmas glitter over Dickens’ harsher chapters. Dickens liked to promote his child heroes up the social ladder to ensure a happy ending. With one eye on entertainment and another on context, the director concludes this version with Oliver being led back to the luxurious refuge of his conveniently wealthy patron. Left behind in a pitiful circle front and centre stage are the children who never escaped.

Mike McKay