Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.As silken as the handkerchiefs Fagin’s boys pickpocket from the gentry, and as polished as the jewels he secretly stashes beneath the floor, this gorgeous staging of Oliver! oozes class as it high-kicks its way into the West End. Directed by Matthew Bourne (with Jean-Pierre van der Spuy), it originated as a Chichester Festival Theatre co-production last summer, but a London-in-January transfer suits it well — it’s as if the foggy, frosty weather were extending Lez Brotherston’s moody Dickensian set design out on to the streets.It’s been billed as a “reconceived” production of Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical but it’s certainly not as radical as some of Bourne’s other work. Rather, Bourne and producer Cameron Mackintosh walk a canny line between the upbeat Cockney carry-on in the musical and the darkness of Dickens’ novel, paying good heed to both as they unpack Oliver’s story with nimble dexterity.Raucous big numbers such as “Oom-Pah-Pah” and “Consider Yourself” come blazing across the footlights, Bourne’s witty, exuberant choreography filling the stage with music-hall zest. But here that joy also feels brittle, a collective brave face from characters all too aware that destitution is just one stroke of bad luck away. Meanwhile, the dark truths about Victorian society that pulse through Dickens’ work come across keenly: poverty, domestic violence, murder and child cruelty.A sign over the grey workhouse canteen reads “God Is Love”, but affection is hard to find: little Oliver’s solo “Where Is Love?” feels like a leitmotif for the show. He (played with touching defiance by Cian Eagle-Service at the performance I saw) may eventually escape unscathed, but the future looks grimmer for the likes of Billy Jenkins’ cheekily charming Artful Dodger, for all his wiles.We may laugh then at the ghastly undertaker and his wife, to whom Oliver is sold: two fabulous Dickensian grotesques, who, in the hands of Stephen Matthews and Jamie Birkett, look as though they have been recently exhumed themselves. But their requirement for the little boy to walk behind tiny coffins is a sharp reminder of the scourge of child mortality. Meanwhile, the comic bickering between bombastic Mr Bumble (Oscar Conlon-Morrey, in fine voice) and his nagging wife (Katy Secombe) foreshadows the truly vicious behaviour of Bill Sikes towards Nancy.Aaron Sidwell’s Sikes is genuinely frightening: a brutal, brutalised man who brings a chill to any room he enters and whom other characters treat as an unexploded bomb. We feel anxious for Shanay Holmes’ excellent Nancy from the outset. Her solo “As Long as He Needs Me” is ripped from deep within her: far from an excuse for domestic violence, it feels like the desperate assertion of a woman trying to convince herself that things are OK.Against this cruelty, Simon Lipkin’s charismatic, piratical Fagin comes over as far less toxic. An enigmatic figure with his earrings, flying floor-length coat and fluttering fingers, he’s a thief, but equally an ambivalent, ingenious maverick who’s had to look after himself in a callous society. He certainly cares more for his gang of street urchins than the workhouse committee does for its infant charges. Lipkin deals with the potentially antisemitic aspects of the character by breaking the fourth wall and pointing up any clichés to the audience. “Reviewing the Situation” he delivers as a droll, yet partly sincere, reflection on the terrors of poverty in old age. It’s a gem of a performance in a 24-carat staging — and it seems only proper that he should steal the show.★★★★★Booking to March 2026, oliverthemusical.com
