Oliver! - Review

Watermill Theatre, Newbury

****

Music, lyrics and book by Lionel Bart

Directed by Luke Sheppard

Thomas Kerry

It is a rare treat to visit Newbury’s charmingly situated Watermill Theatre and Luke Sheppard's Oliver! more than makes the journey worthwhile. On arrival and in one of the most innovative mise-en-scenes, as the audience mingle on the lawn outside sipping Pimms and G&Ts, the cast’s ragamuffin kids dart about, not picking pockets but offering to shine shoes for a sixpence. It’s a charming touch.

As is the way at The Watermill, the production is actor-muso, with the adult cast playing their instruments during moments that don’t involve them in the show’s action. Bart’s striking overture proves an initial treat and it sets the standard for the evening’s music.

The production’s kids are an appropriately cute and talented bunch and on the night of this review the team of youngsters was headed by Thomas Kerry in the title role, with Archie Fisher as the Artful Dodger. Any production of Oliver! however will always be defined by its Fagin and Nancy and with Cameron Blakely and Alice Fearn, this show is in capable hands. If Blakely, the only actor who does not play an instrument, is initially a little too driven by stereotype he settles into the role well. Fagin should never be a truly sympathetic character, yet by the time he gets around to his wonderful Reviewing The Situation, the audience are laughing with him, not at him.

Fearn’s Nancy is simply as good as it gets. Aside from her piano and recorder playing duties she looks and sounds every inch the protagonist of one of the most complex love stories in the canon, with a voice that is just sensational. Fearn simply smashes It’s A Fine Life, whilst her As Long As He Needs Me both thrills and inspires, vocally soaring through her inexplicable devotion to Bill Sikes.

It is a stroke of genius that sees Sheppard set Nancy’s act two opener Oom-Pah-Pah, traditionally staged in an East End pub, back on the theatre’s lawn as the audience are finishing off their interval libations. Fearn’s delivery is bawdy, raucous and with a singalong encouraged if it wasn’t for the downright prosperity of surrounding Berkshire, close your eyes and you could almost be back in Whitechapel! 

Choreographer Tim Jackson also makes fine use of his cast within the compact space. The ensemble numbers are thrilling and Jackson’s work is Who Will Buy? is just a delight as the stage gradually fills to a rousing street scene.

Kit Orton (strings and percussion) puts in a fine turn as Bill Sikes, bringing a detached menace that convinces us of the evil lying at his villain’s core, whilst Steve Watts’ Mr Brownlow is the most compassionate of patricians who also proves a rather dab hand on the trumpet. Susannah van den Berg, always a treat to see perform, cuts a matronly figure as the hard-hearted Widow Corney and  also impresses with a wonderful voice and a talent for remarkable range of instruments.

Perhaps the most impressive musical moment of the night comes from Deborah Hewitt, who when she’s not playing Charlotte, is either tucked away on her drum kit or even more impressively, roaming the stage in a masterclass of syncopation, strapped to her one-(wo)man-band contraption. A nod too to the comic crafts of Tomm Coles’ (wind) Mr Sowerberry and Graham Lappin’s (piano and trombone) definition of vacuous pomposity, Mr Bumble.  

The show’s programme contains some well researched background material, but annoyingly does not give the actors any (deserved) credit for the instruments that they play. So to complete the record, also putting in a first class shift were Joey Hickman on piano and trombone, Rachel Dawson on strings and the marvellous Rhona McGregor on Piano, strings and sax

Given the impoverished backdrop to Oliver!, the economy of doing away with a separate orchestra works well and amidst Tom Rogers' striking multi-level set design and Howard Hudson’s trademark stunning lighting, the time and place of a grim Victorian London is thrillingly captured. If Lionel Bart is looking down upon the Watermill’s production, he’s surely smiling.

Runs until 19th September

Photo credit: Philip Tull

Dickens Abridged

Arts Theatre, London

****

Written and directed by Adam Long

Damian Humbley

Charles Dickens is as much a fixture of our Christmas culture as a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. So cue Adam Long, a man with impeccable form in abbreviating classic English texts and a co-founder/creator of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Having given us the Bard's complete works (abridged), Long has now moved forward a couple of centuries and fixed his canon upon the works of the great Victorian with Dickens Abridged being a hilarious 90minute zip through some of the writer's classic treasures.

Five guys play all the parts (including some female roles),with Damian Humbley mostly playing Dickens. Opening with Oliver Twist and with some lovely nods to the Oscar winning movie the humour is sharp throughout and the songs (with music all played by the talented band of actor-musicians) having a folksy acoustic guitar sound. Un-mic’d, the occasion has the air of a top-notch Edinburgh Fringe performance.

Humbley is, as always, West End gold. An Australian actor, playing an English writer who for some inexplicable reason along with the rest of the cast, is speaking with a Californian accent. (Maybe so American tourists will understand?). His waist-coated and bearded writer is a joy throughout, never more so then when as an aged and demented Dickens, he is visited by some of his fictional characters seeking revenge for the misfortune he has heaped upon them. The show does not demand an intimate knowledge of the novels, although a passing familiarity with some of the more famous books such as A Tale Of Two Cities and David Copperfield will only add to the evening’s enjoyment.

The irreverence is gorgeously affectionate. Jon Robyns, fresh out of Spamalot and playing amongst others Mr Bumble and Dickens’ wife is a scream, whilst Gerard Carey’s Tiny Tim (with electric guitar for a crutch) is another comedy gem. The guillotine moment from A Tale Of Two Cities is bloodily re-enacted (fear not though, the emphasis is on the humour rather than the horror) with an inspired moment of a decapitated Robyns on mouth organ that will stay with me for a long time.

Kit Orton and Matthew Hendrickson complete the talented company and for a clever Christmas offering, you won’t find funnier. The best of times? Undoubtedly. Dickens Abridged certainly left me wanting more!

Runs until 5th January 2014

The Hired Man

Curve Studio, Leicester

****

Book and lyrics by Melvyn Bragg

Music by Howard Goodall

Directed by Daniel Buckroyd



Julie Atherton and Kit Orton

The Hired Man is quite possibly the greatest ever English musical. In a story that avoids sentiment and cliché, Bragg and Goodall open a window into a tightly knit Cumbrian community, via a tale that spans the reigns of Queen Victoria through to King George V and addresses the growth of industry, the challenge it presented to those who worked the land, the rise of the trade union movement, the devastation of the First World War and the emerging trend towards women’s emancipation. And all this through perceptive verse and the most stirring of scores.

David Hunter, an ITV Superstar semi-finalist is John Tallentire, the hired man of the title who is introduced at a hiring fair, in the Song Of The Hired Men, a striking melody reprised throughout the show. Newly arrived in Crossbridge village, together with pregnant wife Emily,  John is an honest hard working man, blind to the subtleties of life and oblivious to his beautiful wife’s needs for more than just the “same blessed rain on washing day”. When Emily first spies local landowner’s son and cad Jackson Pennington wrestling in a local tavern, she cannot help but immediately flirt with him. Inevitably trysting follows and act one culminates with the blindly-trusting John excruciatingly learning of his having been cuckolded.

Act two condenses a vast span of years and plot into a credible hour of performance. The exploitation of the coal miners and the emergence of a union in response to their hellish working conditions together with the slaughter and devastated aftermath of war are tackled confidently by the writers.

Daniel Buckroyd, Artistic Director of Colchester’s co-producer Mercury Theatre is no stranger to the work and on Juliet Shillingford's cleverly designed sloping slabs of land, that depict Cumbrian fells as vividly as the Somme, he extracts clever concepts, particularly with the boisterous tavern scenes and a gripping penultimate moment, set at a Whitehaven coal face that has been terrifyingly extended far out under the sea. Yet Buckroyd also makes some disappointing short cuts. Blackrock, a phenomenally stirring song of the dangers of mining is an opportunity wasted, with minimal acting action being added to its powerful lyrics.  Farewell Song, sung as the local men leave for war and which could arguably be included in the liturgy of any Remembrance Service such is its power, has some of the most beautifully engineered key changes ever composed and should, in the right hands,  be able to effortlessly prise open the tear ducts. In this production, sadly, it fails to hit that spot.

John's is a very tough role to portray.  A solid traditional man of the land, black and white in opinion and seeking only to work hard to provide for his family, his naivete lends a profound complexity to his make up. Whilst unquestionably beautifully voiced, Hunter doesn’t quite reach the depths of credibility that could make this character truly believable.

Julie Atherton however is a definitive Emily.  Her pitch and tone are perfection and her acting is simply flawless. A woman, fiercely loving and protective as a mother, yet with a burning desire to broaden her world through both a passionate love affair and later in going out to work. (In an era still brimming with chauvinism,  it was rare for married women to earn a wage.) The frustrated passion that Atherton injects into her character’s supressed desire for Jackson is almost red-hot with stifled sexual yearning and when Bragg’s story draws Emily into experiencing tragedy, her response and sobs of grief are perfectly delivered to claw at our heart strings without once becoming mawkish.  Kit Orton’s Jackson (also a dab hand on the violin)  together with Jenni Bowden’s singing and trumpet-playing performances are noteworthy cast members amongst a talented company who all perform with wit and clarity throughout.

Under pianist / MD Richard Reeday the show’s music is simply yet subtly arranged. A modestly sized band, drawn mainly from the cast who pick up their instruments as and when required and with an inspired inclusion of harp and trumpet. Never has Goodall’s music sounded so perfect, with just enough mournful trumpet melodies lines to depict the North poignantly and passionately.

Albeit possibly deserving of an alternative title: “The Hired Man’s Wife”, this production nonetheless remains what its writers always intended. A living history lesson, beautifully told, of England’s transition into the 20th century.

Runs until April 27th