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by Lionel Bart, directed by Donna Feore

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

May 30-October 29, 2006

“More Imagination, Please”

The musical on Stratford’s Festival stage this year is the British musical “Oliver!” by Lionel Bart from 1960 based on Charles Dickens’s 1839 novel “Oliver Twist”.  Musically, it’s one of the strongest productions ever on this stage with everyone, both children and adults, sporting superb singing voices.  It’s a pity, then, that problems with direction and design should prevent the show from being the complete success it could have been.

Director and choreographer Donna Feore has been an associate or assistant director or choreographer of many shows at Stratford in the past, but this is her first turn in the main seat in charge of directing on one of the most difficult stages in Canada.  In the past, directors inexperienced with the Festival’s thrust stage try to pretend it’s really just a proscenium stage with a rather large apron.  This was evident just last year in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s direction of “The Lark”.  What Feore has done is rather more curious.  Designer Santo Loquasto has built large square floor to cover the Festival’s stage with one corner projecting exactly to the centre of the auditorium up Aisle 5.  Feore has directed and choreographed the show as if there were a proscenium rising over the house right side of that square.  The result is that those seated in either direction off Aisle 7 will feel that they are looking at the action head-on.  That also means that anyone seated in house left will feel they are looking at the action from the side--and that is half of the auditorium.  I was seated just off Aisle 3 in what would normally be counted a perfected good seat, but I and those around me whom I asked felt that we were watching the show from the wings.  Because of how Feore has so oddly skewed the action, my advice is that if you really what to enjoy the show is to ensure that your seats are on the house right side of the auditorium.

Once a well-drawn banner depicting Victorian London flies up it reveals Santo Loquasto singularly unattractive set.  He has built a bridge articulated at the apex of the stage’s balcony that swing into the house right area of the stage to signify the entrance to Fagin’s lair.  First, such a bridge is unnecessary in a theatre that already has steps leading up to a balcony and down again.  Second, the bridge looks so rickety that you are afraid when anyone, especially the children have to use it since it shakes so much.  The structure must, of course, actually be safe, but an audience should never have to worry about the physical safety of the performers.  Third, the bridge is not even used effectively.  The square floor Loquasto added was to increase the area for dancing, but the supports needed for this unnecessary bridge especially when it is swung open create impediments.  Beside this, when, at the end, the bridge is supposed to represent a bridge over the Thames, Feore has the actors look up at it from either side, not as if they are on the banks of the river but, apparently, in the river itself!

As for Loquasto’s costumes, they are a mishmash of several periods.  Mr. Bumble and Widow Corney seem to have walked in from the previous century.  The orphans’ clothing and that of other poor people at least shows signs of wear but all seem to have arrived fresh cleaned from the laundry.  It makes sense to make Nancy stand out, but why give her a dress from the 1950s that flies out waist-high when she twirls as no Victorian dress ever would?  And why dress her companion ladies of the night as can-can dancers, a style that is both French and became popular 50 years after the period of the novel?

These peculiarities of design and direction are a pity because otherwise the musical is so well sung.  Little Tyler Pearse is an ideal, cherubic Oliver with a fine strong voice for a ten-year-old and gives lovely performances of “Where Is Love?” and “Who Will Buy?” the young Scott Beaudin as Jack Dawkins, known as the “Artful Dodger” is also excellent and exudes charm and commanding presence on stage.

As for the adults, while Bart plays up the malice of the characters Bill Sikes, Mr. Sowerberry and Noah Claypole, he whitewashes the character of Fagin.  In part this is because Bart has eliminated the plot involving Monks, Oliver’s half-brother, who schemes with Fagin to kidnap and kill Oliver to gain his inheritance.  Bart also glosses over Fagin’s habit of beating the boys who work for him.  What’s left of Fagin in the musical is a kind of eccentric old man who acts as a surrogate father-figure for the boys he trains.  Colm Feore fills this benign role admirably and despite his fame never steals focus from the boys on stage.  Fagin is supposed to be Jewish, but Feore gives no hint of that in his characterization.  He makes “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and especially “Reviewing the Situation” into the comic highlights of the show.

In contrast, Bart has made Bill Sikes absorb all the villainy of both Fagin and the missing Monks.  Brad Rudy makes the character truly frightening and it’s pleasure to see him get the chance finally to command the stage in a major role.  Bruce Dow communicates a nice combination of menace and comedy as the beadle Mr. Bumble.  Brian McKay is appropriately lugubrious as the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry and Kyle Blair, who far has played “nice guys” at Stratford, proves he can also irascible bully Noah Claypole to great effect.  Stephen Russell as Mr. Browlow and Grance Chan as Mrs. Bedwin provides welcome voices of calm and compassion as people take Oliver in to care for him.

Fine as these performances may be, it is really Blythe Wilson’s fantastic performance as Nancy who gives the show its energy.  As a prostitute in love with Bill Sikes, a man who beats her, who decides to do a good deed once in her life, Nancy is the show’s most complex character and Wilson fully captures this complexity.  Wilson’s pain-filled, full-voiced rendition of “As Long as He Needs Me” literally stopped the show as Wilson was greeted with a roof-raising torrent of applause and bravos.  Wilson is the real thing--a singer with charisma and a powerful voice who can wrap up an entire audience in the emotion of a song.

Mary Ellen Mahoney as the Widow Corney is a fitting comic companion to Bruce Dow’s Mr. Bumble.  Barbara Fulton (Mrs. Sowerberry), Dayna Tekatch (Charlotte) and Christina Gordon (Old Lady) all give fine performances in these roles.  But their best moment comes when they become, respectively, a Milkmaid, a Rose Seller and a Strawberry Seller and are joined by Donnie Macphee as a Knife Seller and Barrie Wood as a Long Song Seller in the beautiful quintet of voices Oliver hears from his window that slowly segues into Oliver’s joyful song “Who Will Buy?”

Judging “Oliver!” from the point of view of such performances, this is vocally perhaps the strongest musical Stratford has ever presented on the Festival stage.  There is no weak link in the cast.  Donna Feore’s direction remains at best efficient and her choreography is surprisingly mundane.  If her imagination had risen to the level of the performances, this show would be a major triumph.      

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Colm Feore, Scott Beaudin and Tyler Pearse. ©David Hou.