Oliver! directed by Matthew Bourne is billed as a ‘fully reconceived’ version of Lionel Bart’s musical. Very little seems to have been reconceived. This stylish and dynamic show develops like an unblemished copy of Carol Reed’s film. Fair enough. Punters want comfort, not novelty when they go to see a 65-year-old musical. Billy Jenkins, as the Artful Dodger, captures every heart in the auditorium. But of course he does. It’s no slur on Jenkins to point out that the ‘Dodger’ is one of the greatest acting gigs in all musical theatre. Has it ever been done badly?
The Oliver I saw, Raphael Korniets (one of three sharing the role), is a slender youngster with a huge singing voice. And he speaks his lines in a beautiful Home Counties accent, as if he were the new elocution coach at the RSC. Oliver’s upper-crust manner persuades Fagin to treat him like visiting royalty and to pretend that the pickpocketing gang are engaged in a respectable trade. This ironic joke initiates the magical sequence of melodies and dance routines that mark Oliver’s transition into the criminal underworld. Virtually everything is staged exactly as it is in the film. And it’s exactly what you want.
The only variation is Simon Lipkin’s Fagin. Instead of a wrinkled old dandy, Lipkin is a muscular young athlete who leaps across the boards with the grace and charm of a ballet dancer. Lipkin shows us an attractive Fagin, a laddish Fagin, a sexually magnetic Fagin. He dispenses with the character’s creepier under-notes and he extends the role with improvisations. When Bill Sikes offers him a haul of stolen cutlery, he takes a pair of spoons and taps out a rhythm on his thigh. ‘Bill Sikes, gives you a spoon,’ he says, ‘but he doesn’t give a fork.’ Lionel Bart would have applauded.
The Gift is an absurdist play which opens with an outrageous incident whose repercussions cascade through the story. The writer, Dave Florez, has perhaps been studying Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and The Metamorphosis by Kafka. Colin is a 43-year-old drifter who receives an unsolicited cake box through the post. Inside is a sample of human faeces disguised as a chocolate eclair.
Virtually everything is staged exactly as it is in the film. And it’s exactly what you want
Colin, who lacks any true ambition in life, turns into an amateur sleuth and compiles a list of 49 acquaintances who may have sent him the package. His underoccupied sister, Lisa, and her idle husband, Brian, volunteer to help with the inquiry. It’s unclear why. The characters have no external concerns, and no reason to exist other than to appear in this story. They’re like talking heads from a four-box newspaper cartoon.
Florez’s script is crammed with innocuous jokes. ‘Rich tea biscuits? Those are the ones that adults use to trick children into not liking biscuits.’ That gag, if it’s funny at all, is better suited to a stand-up routine or a book of humour. It’s completely unrelated to the characters and their search for Colin’s enemy.
The plot, although simplistic, is hard to decipher. At the end of Act One, the culprit is revealed. In Act Two, Colin takes revenge on a different culprit by staging a prank that involves nudity in a nearby restaurant. What for? To pad out the show with amusing events, obviously, but Colin’s odd behaviour isn’t explained. The play feels like the outcome of a wager. ‘Can you turn a two-minute sketch into a full-length melodrama?’
Much of the dialogue involves memories of childhood events and half-forgotten family gatherings. Textual exchanges are read out. Emails between office rivals are discussed by Colin and Brian who seem fascinated by the use of capital letters and exclamation marks in digital communications. The valediction ‘regards’ causes them much anguish. Lisa waits and watches during these wordy interludes. What’s missing is live action. All the key events take place off stage.
The play feels like the outcome of a wager. ‘Can you turn a two-minute sketch into a full-length melodrama?’
Finally, at the climax, a curious little fistfight is arranged between Colin and Brian which doesn’t affect the outcome of the story. But at least it obliges the characters to do things in front of the audience and not to chatter about stuff that happened years ago.
The press-night crowd seemed to enjoy this meandering frivolity. A few of the oldies nodded off. Someone in the third row grazed intermittently from a crinkly bag of popcorn. The costume designer, Ilaria Mosca, seems to have had fun making the male characters look as puny and sexless as possible. Brian dresses like a Blue Peter presenter. Colin dresses like a homeless Blue Peter presenter. Lisa (Laura Haddock) is far too attractive to have bedded the dopey Brian. Her chic wardrobe matches her natural glamour. First she appears in a swishy olive trouser suit. Later she slips into a svelte crimson robe that wouldn’t look out of place at a White House ball. Why did she marry a wittering deadbeat like Brian? That’s the real mystery.
Comments