Less, please, of this overblown Oliver! PATRICK MARMION reviews Oliver! at London’s Gielgud Theatre
Olivier! (Gielgud Theatre, London)
Verdict: Loud and exaggerated
Reality actually has no place in Lionel Bart’s cheerful musical staging of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Far from being a work of social realism, his show is a glorious escape from the grim reality of the Victorian orphanages and the criminal underworld in which the show is set.
Thanks to a famously unbeatable selection of music hall songs – from Food Glorious Food to Consider Yourself – it’s a big, shining, tapping lark.
That’s why I find it strange that Cameron Mackintosh’s critically acclaimed revival (first seen in Chichester last year), directed by choreographer Matthew Bourne, aims to remind us that living below the poverty line in 19th-century London was no joke.
The domestic abuse of villain Bill Sikes is brutally emphasized, and a slogan above Oliver’s orphanage sarcastically proclaims “God is love.”
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t fun. It’s not surprising that Bourne’s choreography runs like a Rolls-Royce. Oom-Pah-Pah after the break is one of the most exuberant welcome songs ever written.
Thanks to a famously unbeatable selection of music hall numbers – from Food Glorious Food to Consider Yourself – it’s a big, shining, tapping lark

I find it strange that Cameron Mackintosh’s critically acclaimed revival (first seen in Chichester last year), directed by choreographer Matthew Bourne, is keen to remind us that living below the poverty line in 19th century London was no joke .

The show is real Cockney on its knees for much of the time, with the barrel well and truly rolled out in tunes like You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two and Be Back Soon

Where Bourne gives us spectacle and punches, the show’s characters are drawn hesitantly

Bourne’s choreography runs like a Rolls-Royce. Oom-Pah-Pah after the break is one of the most exuberant welcome songs ever written

I don’t want to participate in a show that is enthusiastically performed on a crowded merry-go-round, under gangways and bridges covered in dry ice and laundry. But me and my moderator daughter were not blown away
And the show is real Cockney on its knees for much of the time, with the barrel well and truly rolled out in tunes like You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two and Be Back Soon.
But where Bourne gives us spectacle and punches, the show’s characters are hesitantly drawn.
Far from being a cunning creature forced to live by his wits, Simon Lipkin’s pickpocket Fagin is a strapping, stentorian drifter. If he wanted to, he could certainly make light work of Aaron Sidwell’s criminal Bill Sikes.
But Lipkin is certainly also a warm father figure to his young students.
And while Shanay Holmes could use more attitude as barmaid Nancy, she isn’t too downtrodden in her conflicted song for Bill, As Long As He Needs Me.
The most moving song is for our hero Oliver in Where Is Love – delivered in the crystal tones of a choir boy by Cian Eagle-Service in the performance I saw.
I don’t want to participate in a show that is enthusiastically performed on a crowded merry-go-round, under gangways and bridges covered in dry ice and laundry. But me and my moderator daughter were not blown away. Too much feels too loud and overdone.
Even Oliver’s famous request for more porridge seems exaggerated. I wanted less of everything – except of course Bart’s raw, reality-defying fantasy.
The devil may care
(Southwark Playhouse, London)
Verdict: Thriller in Manila
Fans, like me, of Channel 5’s All Creatures Great And Small will be happy to know that they can catch ladies’ man Tristan Farnon (Callum Woodhouse, right) up close and personal at the bijou Southwark Playhouse. He stars as a derailed playboy and former gunrunner in The Devil May Care – a funny adaptation of an early comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Writer-director Mark Giesser has moved the action from revolutionary America in the 1780s to the Philippines in the 1900s, where American colonial forces violently put down local uprisings.
Woodhouse’s character Richard is a prodigal son who has become the beneficiary of his father’s will – despite having displeased his mother by living a life ‘among unreliable men and open-minded women’.
Giesser turns Shaw’s satire of colonial hypocrisy into a courtroom thriller set in Manila after Richard defies faith by standing in for a pastor accused of spreading sedition among the natives.
His decision is a rhetorical device typical of Shaw, but it also gives rise to a wry and witty discussion of personal, religious, political, colonial and military ethics.

Theater production The Devil May Care, Southwark

It is not the most refined production, in front of a wall with Rousseau-esque jungle paintings and curio furniture. But the acting is also sharp
A playful presence on stage and screen, Woodhouse is somehow believable as unlikely contender Richard, mobilizing duplicity, daring and charm.
It is not the most refined production, in front of a wall with Rousseau-esque jungle paintings and curio furniture. But there is also sharp acting from Beth Burrows as the vicar’s wife who – in another Shavian twist – turns out to be a brilliant lawyer.
*Oliver! books until September 28. The Devil May Care runs until February 1.
The revival of the murderous maid game lacks luster
The Maids (Jermyn Street Theatre, London)
Verdict: powerless power play
The real-life 1930s beating to death of a mother and daughter by their two servants, the Papin sisters, became a ’cause célèbre’ – and the inspiration for Jean Genet’s ‘absurdist’ 1947 play The Maids, a radical psychological study of class . power and revenge.

The Maids at the Jermyn Street Theatre

The Maids is a radical psychological study about class, power and revenge
That might explain why the set for the Annie Kershaw revival has the feel of a clinical, soulless cell in a mental hospital. The white-tiled room is bare except for a dressing table, a digital clock and vases of dead brown flowers.
“You stink of sweat,” says a young woman in a silk robe, sniffing the meek, cringing maid. “Touching you is touching dirt,” she spits. “You owe your entire existence to me.”
Her tone of haughty disgust doesn’t ring entirely true. Then she stumbles over the maid’s name and it becomes clear that these sisters are playing some kind of game.
While their mistress is away, they take turns as the abusive employer and the mistreated servant. Apparently obsessed with this woman’s superiority and otherness and the inequality of their situation, they slip between being servile and fantasizing about stopping it all… by poisoning her chamomile tea.
But just as the fantasy seems to become a murderous reality, the game is cut short by her unexpected return. Carla Harrison-Hodge plays the Mistress as a prancing parody of the likes of Made In Chelsea: too ridiculous to be alarming, too vain and vacuous to see anything other than her own misguided reflection of herself.

*The Maids is in London until January 22, then moves to Reading Rep
Anna Popplewell and Charlie Oscar do well to suggest the crushed, conflicted minds of the maids, but as competent as this production is, it lacks an essential nervous intensity.
I blame Martin Crimp’s inert, shapeless adaptation, which fails to find the play’s dramatic heartbeat. A historical play loses its power.
*The Maids is in London until January 22, then moves to Reading Rep (January 28 – February 8).
Cirque’s scary spectacle is still flying high
Corteo (Royal Albert Hall)
Verdict: Wonderfully discouraging
What kind of nightmares must these boys be having, I began to wonder, during Cirque Du Soleil’s latest residency at the Albert Hall.
Coincidentally, their new show is designed as the enchanting dream of an Italian clown, Mauro, who imagines his carnivalesque funeral and journey to the afterlife.
The Albert Hall is bisected by a turn-of-the-century ballroom, which turns the audience on either side into part of the opulent backdrop. We also become part of the action, when a little ‘clown’ bounces over us, supported by huge helium balloons.
As angels soar across the stage, the clown’s journey into eternity is nevertheless the familiar procession of acrobats and contortionists.
But the formula feels fresher, as trapeze artists get tangled in chandeliers above Mauro’s bed and trampoliners bounce on his mattress.
Ultimately, no amount of narrative gimmick or amount of glitzy costumes can disguise a high-stakes display of gymnastics — including the heartbreaking moment when a man climbs a free-standing 12-foot ladder.
There’s the usual silly comedy; a nervous ‘golf ball’ (a woman’s head, wearing a white dimpled swimming cap, sticks out through a hole in the stage) waits while a bumbling giant in plus-fours swings a club.
But then it’s defying gravity again. The show reaches a climax with a dozen men on horizontal bars. Externally they are cool like zucchini. But what dreams should come as they shuffle from home to bed?
*Until March 2.