Oom pah pah!

Oliver!
Drury Lane

Roaring Trade
Soho

A show with an exclamation mark in the title has a lot of promises to fulfill. Oliver! opens on a magnificent note. The dark, silkily lit workhouse teems with the figures of stooped orphans who crawl up through the floorboards and march around the shadows like sad doomed little robots. And Julius D’Silva’s Mr Bumble has exactly the right mixture of gravity and silliness.

Then things dip sharply. The funeral parlour scenes are marred by gosh-I’m-funny acting and the flimsy set is a sawn-off afterthought. Oliver’s big solo number ‘Where Is Love?’ comes out querulous and underpowered, possibly because somebody asked Harry Stott to do it lying on his side, propped on one arm. Not ideal if you have to fill a very large theatre and you’re only 12.

But once the kid hits London the show hits the money. The sets are wondrous. Fagin’s den is magnificently seedy and the rich, dark, lovely complexities of the city’s exteriors look like prize-winners. Eric Dibb Fuller as Dodger has the perky, vibrant charm of Tommy Steele and he launches himself at the role with irresistible energy. ‘Consider Yourself’ had the whole place sighing with raptures. The lad is ten. What a dazzler. Let’s hope further triumphs await him.

As Fagin, Rowan Atkinson has a very tough task and brings it off faultlessly. Not only must he find something different from Blackadder and Mr Bean he has to distinguish himself from Ron Moody, too. He does this while still doffing his cap in a Moodyish direction. Of course he can’t resist the temptation to add a few flourishes that belong in his one-man show but the crowd loved everything he did, best of all the improvised hand-mime work during ‘Reviewing the Situation’ (Atkinson mimes with his hands better than anyone you’ll ever see).