Feature: Theatre - Fifty up for Lionel Bart's Oliver

Published: 26 August 2010
by JOSH LOEB

BEFORE the curtain went up at the premiere of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! in 1960, there were mutterings that transferring Dickens’s dark tale of Victorian social degradation from page to stage would be a flop. 

How wrong those mutterers were. The show was a roaring hit – going on to win awards and light up Broadway – and now, 50 years on from that first performance, the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, Holborn, is staging a special exhibition to commemorate it.

Dickens was already being lauded for The Pickwick Papers by 1838 when he published Oliver Twist, which cemented the 24-year-old’s reputation as the most famous writer of his day.

But the novel proved controversial, most notably for Dickens’s depiction of Fagin – referred to as “Fagin the Jew” throughout the first edition. Rebukes from readers led the author to tone down the character’s Jewishness.

“The Victorian period is know as an anti-Semitic period of British history,” says Charles Dickens Museum director Dr Florian Schweizer. 

“Looking at Jews in that way was part of the society Dickens lived in, but people who had suf­fered because of it wrote to him and he changed the text. He also tried to make up for his mistake by having a very sympa­thetic Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend.”

The jump from page to stage was smooth because Dickens had always had an interest in the theatre and melodrama, says Dr Schweizer. “His novels were full of elaborate characters,” he says. “Good versus evil – that’s the dynamic of Oliver Twist.”

However, some conspicuous trans­formations took place in the process of staging the novel. Fagin’s nastiness, for example, was mitigated in Bart’s musical – and the baddie took centre stage. 

“In the musical, he is more of a focal point than Oliver himself,” says Dr Schweizer. “He’s always attracted the star actors. He’s the villain they all want to play.” 

Russ Abbot, who is currently playing Fagin for the fourth time in the West End revival of Oliver! confirms that the character is a joy to play. 

“It’s every actor’s ambition to play a villain,” he says. “They say Fagin is a lovable rogue but he’s a crook really – so much so he went to the gallows in the book. He gets off in the musical. He’s a pimp basically – he’s using Oliver and the other boys for stealing and skulduggery.”

But Abbot says it is a challenge to portray Fagin’s malodorous personality alongside song and dance. 

“I like to play it very dark and very serious,” he says. “When Oliver wakes up and sees me looking in my jewellery box, I take that as very serious – life threatening in a sense. He sees me looking at my jewels and knows where I’ve hidden them. But then you break into song and the whole thing lightens up.” 

• Oliver: From Page To Stage is at the Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, WC1. Adults £6, concessions £4.50, children £3 

• Oliver! is at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, booking to Jan­uary 8, 0844 412 2955 

Pictured: Left: Charles Dickens. Right: Dr Florian Schweizer