Oliver Twist

I saw this show on Wednesday night last. I was lucky to get a seat because it was SRO. I don't know whether to put that down to the fact that this is the last show in the Princess May Theatre, it has a cast of about 30 (including a 'kid squad'of about 10) or that it's just that time of the year. I DO know we could do with some of the overflow 5 minutes down the road at Phoenix for the 'Karaoke Twist Christmas Special' ;-) I take my hat off to Nicola and Peter (and helpers) for taking on this mammoth task and pulling it off. Given the numbers and time, it was inevitable that there was a degree of variation in the individual performances, but overall it was impressive. Some of the kid squad in particular would have done (or will do) well in the musical version I'm sure! As to the play itself - obviously a much darker version than we have grown accustomed to - and that was well conveyed. I did feel that there were a lot of loose threads however - bits of business that didn't seem to go anywhere. Maybe I just missed the point? The death of Bill Sikes was a bit anticlimatic - I would have felt more fulfilled if we could have seen his still-twitching dead body ground into the stage, like those he had so brutally abused and murdered. On the other hand, short of paedophilia, I couldn't see that Fagin's crimes warranted capital punishment. Well done, all!