Oom-pah-pah! Plenty of that – with enough emphasis on Fagin as a surrogate papa to suggest a pun in this most boisterous of numbers. Oliver! is, after all, a show about families, lost, restored and invented. Yet there is also plenty of swirling darkness. The London fog and the rain that daggers down outside the workhouse. The song, cut from the 1968 film, delivered among coffins with Addams family glee. The sobbing anger, the desperate self-persuasion with which Shanay Holmes as Nancy delivers As Long As He Needs Me – immediately after Bill Sikes (a clenched Aaron Sidwell) has hit her.
Much of Matthew Bourne’s production, first seen last year at Chichester, is glorious: a celebration of the switchback swell of Lionel Bart’s music and lyrics; a proof of what a boon Bourne is to the stage. It is more than 30 years since he first choreographed Oliver! and staged the Swan Lake that revolutionised ballet and the way men think of themselves. He revisits both shows this year, with changes – minor but effective.
