Given its status as a musical theater classic that subsequently became an Oscar-winning film and perennial favorite of amateur theater companies, it is hard to believe that “Oliver!” has not received a professional production in New York in 40 years.
Then again, upon viewing the uneven, mostly enjoyable new Encores! production of “Oliver!” at City Center, you can see how the musical presents quite a few issues for a modern audience, including its depictions of Dickensian child abuse and labor exploitation, a young woman whose big solo is about how she willingly endures physical abuse from her sociopathic partner for the sake of love, and an aging male molded in anti-Semitic tropes.
I first came into contact with “Oliver!” at 11 years old when I played an orphan in an extremely abridged summer camp production – so abridged, in fact, that it consisted of about a half hour of highlights almost exclusively from the first act. (In some ways, I prefer the Camp Weequahic adaptation.)
“Oliver!” (which has music, lyrics, and book by Lionel Bart, who famously and tragically sold away his copyright for a pittance) is a one-of-a-kind creation that truly deserves the exclamation mark in its title, made up of bright and bouncy tunes, earnest romantic ballads, low humor, melodrama, literary pedigree, and many child actors. Before Andrew Lloyd Webber came along, “Oliver!” essentially represented the English musical.
The City Center production is directed by Lear DeBessonet (who scored a major win one year ago with “Into the Woods”) and is based on a revised version of the musical (previously presented in London in the 1990s) which tries to balance the cheer personified by the upbeat ensemble song-and-dance number “Consider Yourself” with a decidedly gloomy and confrontational tone that often feels forced.
The cast includes Benjamin Pajak (whose performance as Oliver is individualized and yearning rather than blank, which is often the case with preteens in the role), Raúl Esparza (whose Fagin is ghoulish-looking, kooky and spirited), Lilli Cooper (who makes for a big-voiced and tough Nancy), Brad Oscar (who provides first-rate comic support as the bumbling Mr. Bumble), and Julian Lerner (an endearing Artful Dodger full of showy gestures).
In “Consider Yourself,” the actors are temporarily joined by the nonprofessional Community Youth Ensemble for a sequence of pure musical theater bliss – a feeling that is then repeated in the four songs performed in quick succession at Fagin’s lair including “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two,” “It’s a Fine Life,” “I’d Do Anything,” and “Be Back Soon.” This more than makes up for all the musical’s overall choppy tone and culturally problematic content.
City Center, 131 W. 55th St., nycitycenter.org, through Sun.
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