Table of Contents
Oliver! (Gielgud Theatre, London)
Verdict: Loud and over the top
Reality doesn’t really belong in Lionel Bart’s jaunty musical staging of Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Far from being a work of social realism, his show is a glorious escape from the grim reality of Victorian orphanages and the criminal underworld where it takes place.
Thanks to an unbeatable list of music hall tunes, from Food Glorious Food to Consider Yourself, it’s a big, radiant, vibrant lark.
Which is why I find it strange that Cameron Mackintosh’s much-celebrated revival (first seen in Chichester last year), directed by choreographer Matthew Bourne, seems eager to remind us that life below the poverty line in 20th-century London XIX was no joke.
Villain Bill Sikes’ domestic violence is brutally emphasized, and a slogan atop Oliver’s orphanage sarcastically proclaims “God is love.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. As expected, Bourne’s choreography works like a Rolls-Royce. Oom-Pah-Pah after the interval is one of the most exuberant welcome songs ever written.
Thanks to an unbeatable list of music hall tunes, from Food Glorious Food to Consider Yourself, it’s a big, radiant, vibrant lark.

I find it strange that Cameron Mackintosh’s much-celebrated revival (first seen in Chichester last year), directed by choreographer Matthew Bourne, seems eager to remind us that life below the poverty line in 19th-century London is not It was a joke.

The show is, for most of the time, a true cockney on its knees, with the cannon well extended on tunes such as You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two and Come Back Soon.

While Bourne gives us spectacle and punches, the show’s characters are drawn more tentatively.

Bourne’s choreography works like a Rolls-Royce. Oom-Pah-Pah after the interval is one of the most exuberant welcome songs ever written.

I don’t want to see a show that is enthusiastically presented in a crowded place, under walkways and bridges covered in dry ice and dirty clothes. But my moderator daughter and I were not impressed.
And the show is, for most of the time, a true cockney on its knees, with the cannon well extended on tunes like You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two and Come Back Soon.
But while Bourne gives us spectacle and punches, the show’s characters are more tentatively drawn.
Far from being a cunning creature, forced to live by his wits, Fagin, Simon Lipkin’s chief pickpocket, is a burly, stentorian vagabond. If he put his mind to it, he could surely make light work of Aaron Sidwell’s thug Bill Sikes.
But at least Lipkin is also a kind-hearted father figure to his young apprentices.
And while Shanay Holmes could use more attitude as waitress Nancy, she’s not overly downtrodden in her confrontational song for Bill, As Long As He Needs Me.
The most moving number falls to our hero Oliver in Where Is Love, delivered in the crystalline tones of a choirboy by Cian Eagle-Service in the performance I saw.
I don’t want to see a show that is enthusiastically presented in a crowded place, under walkways and bridges covered in dry ice and dirty clothes. But my moderator daughter and I were not impressed. Too much seems too loud and over the top.
Even Oliver’s famous request for more porridge seems over the top. I wanted a little less of everything, except, of course, Bart’s strident, reality-defying fantasy.
The devil might care
(Southwark Playhouse, London)
Verdict: Thriller in Manila
Fans, like me, of Channel 5’s All Creatures Great And Small will be excited to know that they can see ladies’ man Tristan Farnon (Callum Woodhouse, right) up close at the bijou Southwark Playhouse. He plays a rootless playboy and former arms dealer in The Devil May Care, a fun adaptation of one of George Bernard Shaw’s early comedies. Writer-director Mark Giesser has moved the action from revolutionary America circa 1780 to the Philippines circa 1900, where American colonial forces are violently crushing local insurrections.
Woodhouse’s character, Richard, is a prodigal son who has become the beneficiary of his father’s will, despite displeasing his mother by leading a life “among lazy men and open-minded women.”
Giesser turns Shaw’s satire on colonial hypocrisy into a Manila courtroom thriller after Richard goes crazy replacing a vicar accused of spreading sedition among the natives.
His decision is a typical Shaw rhetorical device, but it also gives rise to an ironic and witty discussion of personal, religious, political, colonial, and military ethics.

The Devil May Care Theater Production, Southwark

It’s not the most sophisticated production, facing a wall of Rousseau-style jungle paintings and bric-a-brac furniture. But there is also sharp acting.
A playful presence on stage and screen, Woodhouse is somehow believable as the unlikely candidate Richard, mobilizing duplicity, audacity and charm.
It’s not the most sophisticated production, facing a wall of Rousseau-style jungle paintings and bric-a-brac furniture. But there’s also a sharp performance from Beth Burrows as the vicar’s wife who, in another Shavian twist, turns out to be a brilliant lawyer.
* Oliver! is booking until September 28. The Devil May Care will be available until February 1.
The revival of the work of murderous maids lacks brilliance
The Maids (Jermyn Street Theatre, London)
Verdict: impotent power play
The real-life beating death in the 1930s of a mother and her daughter by their two maids, the Papin sisters, became a cause célèbre, and the inspiration for Jean Genet’s “absurdist” work 1947, The Handmaids, a radical psychological study of class. power and revenge.

The Maids at the Jermyn Street Theater

The Maids is a radical psychological study of class, power and revenge.
Which may explain why the setting of the Annie Kershaw revival has the feel of a soulless, clinical cell in a mental hospital. The white-tiled room is empty except for a dresser, a digital clock, and vases of dull brown flowers.
“You reek of sweat,” says a young woman in a silk robe, sniffing the humble, shrunken maid. “Touching you is touching dirt,” he spits. “You owe me your entire existence.”
His tone of haughty displeasure doesn’t ring entirely true. Then he stumbles upon the maid’s name and it becomes clear that these sisters are playing some kind of game.
While their lover is away, they take turns acting as the abusive employer and the abused servant. Evidently obsessed with this woman’s superiority and otherness, as well as the injustice of her situation, they slide between being enslaved and fantasizing about ending it all… by poisoning her chamomile tea.
But just when the fantasy looks like it could become a murderous reality, the game is interrupted by his unexpected return. Carla Harrison-Hodge plays The Mistress as a parody of the likes of Made In Chelsea: too absurd to be alarming, too vain and empty to see anything beyond her own deluded reflection of herself.

*The Maids runs in London until January 22 and then moves to Reading Rep.
Anna Popplewell and Charlie Oscar do well to suggest the crushed and conflicting minds of the handmaids, but however competent this production is, it lacks an essential nervous intensity.
I blame Martin Crimp’s inert, shapeless adaptation, which fails to find the play’s dramatic heartbeat. A historical work loses its power.
*The Maids runs in London until January 22 and then moves to Reading Rep (January 28-February 8).
The terrifying circus spectacle continues to fly high
Corteo (Royal Albert Hall)
Verdict: Delightfully disheartening
What kind of anxiety dreams must these kids have? I began to wonder during Cirque Du Soleil’s latest residency at the Albert Hall.
Coincidentally, his new show is framed as the charming dream of an Italian clown, Mauro, who imagines his carnivalesque funeral and journey to the afterlife.
The Albert Hall is crossed by a turn-of-the-century ballroom, making the audience on either side part of the opulent setting. We also become part of the action when a little “clown” jumps over us, supported by huge helium balloons.
As angels float above the stage, the clown’s journey into eternity is nonetheless the familiar procession of acrobats and contortionists.
But the formula feels fresher, as trapeze artists tangle in chandeliers above Mauro’s bed and trampolines bounce off his mattress.
Ultimately, no amount of narrative trickery or flashy costumes can disguise what is a high-stakes gymnastic display, including the touching moment in which a man climbs a free-standing 12-foot ladder.
There’s the usual silly comedy; a nervous ‘golf ball’ (a woman’s head, in a dimpled white shower cap, protruding from a hole in the stage) waits while a clumsy giant on all fours swings a club.
But then we defy gravity again. The show culminates with a dozen men on horizontal bars. On the outside they are fresh like zucchini. But what dreams must arise when you shuffle home to bed?
*Until March 2.