A Christmas Show's Many Shades

Oliver! at the Paper Mill Playhouse

Fagin (David Garrison), his boy thieves, and Oliver Twist (Tyler Moran), in Paper Mill Playhouse's Oliver!

            There is always a delicate balance, in any production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, between the trite and the zealous, the overenthusiastic and the subtly shaded.  So it is a pleasant surprise when the curtain rises on the Paper Mill Playhouse’s production of the 1960 musical to a well-acted, well-formed, and generally enjoyable experience.

            That’s not to say it’s out of place.  The Paper Mill has an impressive history of working well with children—they launched the career of Anne Hathaway in the mid-‘90s and have produced many excellent child-centric musicals (last year’s The Sound of Music being a key example) without any of the sickeningly sweet posturing that kills many Broadway productions.  But it is quite nice to begin this production (running through December 29th) with such a marvelously staged version of “Food, Glorious Food” that conveys so masterfully the chaos of the London workhouse in which our story begins, and to be gifted, as a sweetener, with the appearance of the very talented Paper Mill perennial John Treacy Egan as Mr. Bumble.  Mr. Egan has a clear, powerful voice and an imposing rotundity that places him at least on equal standing with Sir Harry Secombe in the 1968 film.

            The appearance of Tyler Moran as Oliver Twist may be worrying, as his piercingly high speaking voice and limited acting ability place him a rung or two below some of the other orphans in the workhouse on a likability scale, but these fears are assuaged when we first hear Mr. Moran sing.  It is very difficult to sing “Where is Love?” well, but, in this day and age, it is even more difficult to sing it originally.  Mr. Moran achieves both, and then some.

            In fact, his singing ability matters more, since Mr. Bart’s book often seems to be overshadowed by his superb score.  One can’t help but think Oliver! might have made a better operetta, given how much time is spent on the wonderful songs anyway.

            But of course, as in any stage production and as with the film, this Oliver! becomes infinitely more entertaining upon the appearance of the Artful Dodger, played with a diverting felicity of motion by Ethan Haberfield.  The Dodger takes Oliver Twist off the streets and into a welcoming confederacy of London’s poor, where “there isn’t a lot to spare” but all is shared equally.  It is something of an ideal, and lighter (obviously) than Dickens’ original, rather sour novel, but it’s always a relief to be welcomed to the world of the boy pickpockets, just because it’s so delightfully interesting.

            This version proves no exception.  The young thieves are marvelous dancers, but their master, the morally misguided Fagin, (played by David Garrison, of “Married… With Children” fame), is by a long shot the highlight of the show.  He is certainly the best Fagin I have ever seen.  He has become the character, in his thick makeup and gray beard, and he moves and speaks and dances and even sings as Fagin would.  He embodies the underclass of 1800s British society, the untouchable who does what he can to survive, and yet is hugely fun to watch.

            And this dichotomy itself is the very center of Oliver! as a show.  The dark existence of the poor as written by Charles Dickens is very much its heart, but it is masked in warmth and glow and excellently written songs such that it seems too colorful for complaint.  When matured thief Nancy (Betsy Morgan, fantastic) sings “It’s a Fine Life,” there is a moment when the dancing slows and the cheer drains from the room as she realizes she has denied herself happiness by choosing to involve herself romantically with the abusive crime lord Bill Sikes (Jose Llana, impressively terrifying).  But then it’s back to the dance.

            From there, however, we can sense the characters’ self-denial of everything that’s true about the situation of the poor at this time in London’s East End.  These people have nothing, but they must mask their fear in cheeriness and strive on.  How much must they lie to themselves before it becomes clear that there’s no way out?  (Fagin’s manic number, “Reviewing the Situation,” in the middle of the second act, is a clear representation of this, and, as with everything, Mr. Garrison carries it out without fault.)  It’s this contradiction—the happiness of a faux community vs. the reality of poverty—that is at the heart of every song and every moment in this classic musical, and realizing this (however inadvertent it may have been on the Paper Mill’s part) changes the way one looks at it.  The show’s ambiguous ending seems to neatly tie up all the loose ends, but it’s just a new beginning, one that might end well but might leave our heroes in the lurch again. 

It’s to the credit of this production’s able director, Mark S. Hoebee, that a show of such potential darkness can be made light, but it’s to Lionel Bart’s credit that Oliver! is so, so good, and that’s something we can all be thankful for this year.