STERLING — A classic piece of literature may not make a classic piece of musical theatre. For every megahit like Les Miserables there is a Gone With the Wind, which was adapted into a huge musical flop. In the case of Oliver! both the novel and the musical are true classics. Sterling High School Theatre will be staging the musical Oliver! at 7:30 p.m. tonight and Saturday, Nov. 16 in the school’s theatre.
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens Victorian era novel has been called “one of the great popular works of art of all time.” While Lionel Bart’s musical version has been called “the greatest of all 20th-century British musicals.”
Bart made the music thinking in terms of the many unique characters. Most people over a certain age are familiar with many of the show’s songs. Two of the best numbers, the irresistibly cheery “Consider Yourself” and the blazing torch song “As Long As He Needs Me” were released before the 1960 opening and have become well-known musical standards.
When the musical premiered in London in 1960, Dickens purists decried the way it maximized song and dance sequences at the expense of the book’s darker elements and social commentary.
In Oliver Twist, London is a hellish, hard-hearted city where the poorest are crammed into rotting buildings and orphans live in workhouses.
In Bart’s Oliver! the workhouse is still there, but audiences stay just long enough for a couple of bouncy musical numbers. Fagin’s den of juvenile pickpockets could be a grim place, but with musical interludes such as “Pick a Pocket or Two” and “It’s a Fine Life,” it ends up feeling more like a rowdy fraternity house than part of London’s underbelly.
“The story illuminates the many social ills of Victorian England, particularly the abuses of children in the workhouse system,” said Dutton, Sterling High School Theatre director. “Dickens wrote mostly about people in the lower classes, but his books were read and enjoyed by all. His works are spiced with humor and absurdities, and have been read long after those works of more polished writers of his time have been forgotten.”
The title character, played in the Sterling High production by 11-year-old Caleb Giorgetti, is an orphan abandoned to the “loving” care of the city workhouse, where the boys are fed plenty of verbal abuse and meager portions of gruel. Oliver dares to want more, and in a spiral of luck that goes from bad to rotten, he ends up on the street and in the hands of Fagin, a questionable benefactor who commands a gang of young pickpockets. As a thief, Oliver is a dismal failure, but his luck takes a brief upswing when he is brought into the home of Mr. Brownlow, a well-off gentleman with a secret heartache.
Fagin’s vocation – plying homeless boys with gin and lodgings so they can fill his pockets with stolen goods – makes him no Scout leader, but he becomes one of the more likable characters. Bryson Brownlee, Sterling senior who is playing Fagin says, “I’m not used to playing a ‘redeemable’ villain in musicals. I’ve done roles like Scar in The Lion King or John Dickinson in 1776. It’s nice to be a bit of a breath of fresh air and actually be somewhat of a good person in a musical.”
Nancy, the good-hearted bar maid who loves the menacing Bill Sykes despite her better judgment, provides most of the motherly influence in the show. Sophia Vessey, Sterling junior who plays Nancy says, “She is by far the most difficult role I have ever had the privilege to play. She has so much depth, especially in her relationship with Bill Sikes. I have to show pain, resentment, and hope, all in the same scenes. While it is difficult, I also have loved the opportunity to play her.”
Tickets to the Sterling High School Theatre production of Oliver! are $10 for adults and $5 for students and will be available at the door before each performance. In keeping with the theme of hunger, donations of food for the Sterling Food Bank will be taken in exchange for discounted tickets.
