Stylish facsimile of Carol Reed’s film: Oliver!, at the Gielgud Theatre, reviewed

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?

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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.