Oliver! review: ‘has the audience begging for more’

Simon Lipkin has often been the best thing in the shows he has appeared in. Yet he has managed this accolade without ever quite becoming that production’s main box office draw. This is even true where he has played the title role in such major productions as Elf, the Musical and The Lorax.

However, in this revival of Lionel Bart’s masterpiece, which was first seen in Chichester and is now in the West End, Lipkin’s Fagin is not only the culmination (so far) of a terrific career in musical theatre, he is indisputably and joyously the best reason to buy a ticket. And this in a show – sublimely choreographed and directed by Mathew Bourne –  that is brimful of good reasons to go.

Dickens’s Jew is the more powerfully built of the two and could kill the bully with his thumb if he wanted to

This is not Lipkin’s first Oliver! The performer was previously in the show where he played the role of Bill Sikes, the cudgel-swinging gangster in whose presence one’s life expectancy significantly reduces.

Here that nasty piece of work is played by Aaron Sidwell. Though smaller than Lipkin’s Fagin – as is the rest of the cast – Sidwell makes up for his comparatively slighter frame with a coiled aggression that threatens to snap should anyone forget to cower. Here Dickens’s Jew is obviously the more powerfully built of the two and could kill the bully with his thumb if he wanted to. But he doesn’t. Not because of the law or some moral compass hidden within the lining of his flowing gabardine, but because deep down in him there is a sweet-natured abhorrence of violence. This is a quality clearly appreciated by the army of child pickpockets who the chief thief exploits but also feeds, protects and, judging by the way he tucks Oliver Twist into bed, loves too.

Jack Philpott as Oliver Twist and Billy Jenkins as the Artful Dodger Photo: Johan Persson[Missing Credit]

In Lipkin’s Fagin it is possible to at least glimpse the other two major Jewish roles of the English-speaking stage. The fringed red shawl has something of a tallit about it and the hat could easily pass as a colourful kippah – all garb that could belong to a 19th-century Shylock. And when this Fagin’s eyes are raised to the heavens as he sings Reviewing the Situation there is also something of Tevye’s exasperation with God.

Meanwhile, the ensemble supporting cast are equally top-notch. Cian Eagle-Service (on press night) and Shanay Holmes, as Oliver and Nancy respectively, have show-stopping voices – for the sweetness in Eagle-Service’s case and for sheer bawdy power in Holmes’s.

Meanwhile the excellent Billy Jenkins as the Artful Dodger leads choreography that feels as if it could have only been born on London’s cobbled streets. The beloved Bart, gawd bless ’im, would love it.

Gielgud Theatre

★★★★★