YOU WILL BUY
During a two hour car trip with my future husband, he — being from New York and loving Broadway musicals as much as I — decided to sing every song from Oliver!, his favorite show at that time.
After about an hour, he began to sing “Where Is Love?,” which is one of the show’s most beautiful songs. Before he got the second stanza out, I screamed Enough! Luckily his monotonic pitch neither stopped us from getting married nor kept me from seeing several productions of this wonderful musical over the years, including the movie version which won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1968.
Endearing and exhilarating in its zest to please, Musical Theatre West’s heartfelt revival, smoothly staged by Jamie Rocco, earns its exclamation point, as Hector Guerrero’s rollicking choreography, particularly and exuberantly Dickensian, adds major hoofing to the “Consider Yourself,” “It’s a Fine Life,” and “Who Will Buy?” production numbers. The swift-moving show also manages to find depth among so many bright tunes, many of which you will be singing long after the curtain falls.
Based on Charles Dickens’ beloved novel Oliver Twist, Lionel Bart’s 1960 smash hit takes the audience on a journey through Victorian England where an orphan boy, Oliver, embarks on a quest from workhouse to central London to find love and family. Which is perfect fodder for a musical: Dickens is a lot like Victor Hugo. As with Les Miserables, Oliver! replays an entire novel at warp speed, with fully realized opportunities to depict a swarming cityscape and gloomy back alleys and bridges.
Despite a plot rife with sexual abuse, child exploitation, and murder, Oliver! is surprisingly feel-good. And like Annie, it’s a rags-to-riches tale of an orphan made good despite manifest evil. Oliver (12-year-old Travis Burnett, whose pure boy soprano makes heart-rending the song my husband destroyed), whose innate goodness is assumed rather than developed, just needs enough pluck and luck to outwit the dastardly robber renegade Fagin (the fantastic and unrecognizable, Davis Gaines) and the cruel thief Bill Sikes (scary Kenny Landmon). Oliver does find comfort with Sikes’s much-abused, kindhearted, maternal moll, Nancy, played by the terrific Cayman Ilika, who blows the roof off with her version of “As Long As He Needs Me.”
Along with the leader of Fagin’s gang of pickpockets, the Artful Dodger (roguish Jason Brewer), the colorful cast of characters includes the aptly named Mr. Bumble (William Hartery) and the wacky Widow Corney (Cathy Newman), the orphanage caretakers who sell Oliver to undertakers Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry (Kevin McMahon and Cynthia Ferrer), the Sowerberry’s bullying daughter Charlotte (Maggie Darago), and a heartless hired hand, Noah Claypool (Chaz Feuerstine).
Rich with all the compassion Dickens conferred on his rag-to-riches chronicle, MTW’s unstoppably energetic, contagiously fun revival is sturdy stuff — and, as always, the orchestra, conducted Ryan O’Connell, is as authentic as the acting. With this terrific production, newcomers to, and lovers of, the musical will have no need to be “reviewing the situation.”
photos by Caught in the Moment Photography
Oliver!
Musical Theatre West
Carpenter Performing Arts Center
6200 E. Atherton at Cal State Long Beach
ends on February 24, 2019
for tickets, call 562.856.1999 or visit Musical
