Young cast members take to the stage in Oliver!. Photo / Adam Rosner
Young cast members take to the stage in Oliver!. Photo / Adam Rosner
Respected musician Andrew London reviews the Kāpiti Playhouse production of Oliver!, which has been performed at Kāpiti’s Southward Theatre.
Does any musical ever written have a more singalong-able song than Consider Yourself? Mind you, Food, Glorious Food and Oom-Pah-Pah wouldn’t be far behind.
Certainly, the capacity crowd at Southward relishedevery opportunity to join in when these much-loved musical gems arrived.
Composer Lionel Bart, whose adaptation of the Dickens novel debuted in 1960, would have been right chuffed to have heard his tunes so enthusiastically rendered and received.
The outstanding Katie Docherty as Nancy leads the charge with an ebullient and captivating Oom-Pah-Pah, and a show-stopping As Long as He Needs Me, deservedly reprised.
Equally poignant was Jacob Clough’s Where is Love, a difficult song for any singer, but delivered with a purity, accuracy and lack of contrivance that only served to highlight the beauty of the melody and innocence of his character.
The leads were universally strong; Jesse Pollard-Simmiss was a particularly mischievous and cocky Artful Dodger, Oliver Weir a fearsome Bill Sykes, and Martin Tidy’s Fagin a knockout. He knows he’s landed the “most fun role in the show” and is revelling in it, to the audience’s delight.
The Artful Dodger, Oliver, and cast. Photo / Adam Rosner
Oliver! represented an extraordinary team effort from co-directors and choreographers Shelley Shackleton and Natalie Taiaki who not only performed those tasks with distinction, but designed the ingenious set as well.
The stark black-and-white backdrops and furniture helped to reflect the Dickensian-era harshness in the early workhouse scenes, but served to enhance the colourful costumes in the later scenes, accentuating the changes to Oliver’s fortunes.
It’s surprising they had time to fulfil all these roles — the choreography itself must have been hugely demanding with at least 30 cast members on the stage at times. Many of the musical numbers are also complex; none more so than Who Will Buy?, which has four vocalists weaving counter-melodies in and out of each other.
Musical director Lucy Cameron has done an admirable job here, pulling confident performances out of all the leads, with frequent tempo and key changes, and eliciting complete commitment from background chorus singers throughout the show.
Now more than 60 years old, Oliver! will continue to delight audiences for another 60 years if produced as superbly as this Kāpiti Playhouse production.
