Abstract
Marc Napolitano’s ‘biography’ of Oliver! examines not only the musical’s Dickensian roots but also the collaborations that made the show possible and several important productions, including the premieres in the West End and on Broadway and the 1968 film. 1 Napolitano demonstrates the continued relevance of the Victorian period while also placing the piece in its own historical context: Oliver! ‘reflects the concerns of a distinct period and context’ and a postwar ‘nostalgia for Victorian Englishness’ (p. 4). Close readings of the musical are supplemented by archival research reconstructing the evolution of the show, enhanced by historical details like Lionel Bart’s work with pop star Tommy Steele, and the contemporaneous but contrasting approaches to performing Jewishness in Fiddler on the Roof and Oliver! Readers interested in Dickensian culture texts, Victorian adaptations, or twentieth-century theatre and music will find much of value in Napolitano’s book.
Chapter 1 discusses Dickens’s Oliver Twist and its film and stage adaptations before giving an overview of Lionel Bart and the post-war London theatre scene. If that sounds like a lot for one chapter, it is. The first chapter definitely feels like background, and I found myself wishing for a bit more about Dickens and about the Victorian stage versions. Napolitano includes a table showing which scenes from the novel were kept or omitted in different stage versions between 1855 and 1928 (pp. 12–14), but why not go back further, to the George Almar and C. Z. Burnett melodramas that so strongly influenced later versions? Still, the table is extremely valuable, and indeed the real strength of Napolitano’s book is what he says about Oliver! It is also worth noting that he generously cites scholars like Juliet John, Paul Schlicke, Joss Marsh, and Paul Davis, who discuss Dickens in more detail.
The first chapter introduces a claim that extends throughout the book: Bart’s musical reclaims a British text in an American genre. Despite its roots in Gilbert and Sullivan, in the twentieth century ‘English musical theater was already being dominated by musical trends from other cultures’ (p. 25), especially the string of American book musicals that came in the wake of Oklahoma! Early twentieth-century films like Frank Lloyd’s Oliver Twist (1922) were produced in America, and tended to emphasise the humour of the novel (p. 15). With David Lean’s 1948 film, ‘the culture text of Oliver Twist began to shift from the cheery and sentimental tone of the early American films toward the stark austerity of postwar England’ (p. 16). Bart’s career was intertwined with that of Tommy Steele, an early star who ‘disproved the popular belief that only Americans could produce pop music, much as the debut of Oliver! would disprove the popular belief that only Americans could write musicals’ (p. 25).
Even as he places Oliver! in the Broadway tradition, Napolitano challenges the familiar narrative about the rise of the integrated musical, arguing instead that ‘the golden age of Broadway is defined less by the concept of integration and more by the fundamental complexity of the plots, characters, and themes of classic musical shows,’ in contrast to their simplified English counterparts (pp. 27–8). Bart’s work on Wally Pone, a modern adaptation of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and Lock Up Your Daughters, based on Henry Fielding’s Rape Upon Rape, foretold Oliver! in adapting canonical British authors. Oliver Twist provided Bart with a well known but complex narrative, and ‘Oliver!’s success may have had less to do with the concept of integration and more to do with Bart’s determination to create a show with “guts”’ (p. 124).
Chapters two and three explore the origins and development of Oliver! Using archived materials like manuscript drafts and collaborators’ notes and correspondence, Napolitano reconstructs Oliver!’s evolution. Tables indicate the differences between versions, as scenes and songs were added, cut, and moved around. Bart experimented with various endings and early drafts were ‘grounded more fully in Dickens’s text’ than the final version (p. 63). He claimed the idea came to him from a candy bar (p. 44), but ‘concrete guidance’ for the narrative came from David Lean: all scenes in Oliver! have a counterpart in Lean’s film (p. 47).
Napolitano especially emphasises the collaborators, noting that the show’s success cannot be attributed solely to Lionel Bart. Lock Up Your Daughters had introduced Bart to director Peter Coe and set designer Sean Kenny (p. 41), and in writing the libretto for Oliver!, ‘Bart’s emphasis on glamorous spectacle ensured that the adaptation would resonate with a mainstream audience, while Coe’s devotion to the Dickensian component ensured that style never eclipsed substance’ (p. 78). Kenny’s revolving set was utilitarian in form and function but nonetheless ‘an artistic triumph,’ with rickety wooden staircases evoking nineteenth-century London (p. 86). Yet, it was also fundamentally modern, exposed to the audience, who could see it change and so were granted ‘unprecedented access to the practice of stagecraft’ (p. 88). Kenny’s set and Coe’s direction were indispensible to the success of Oliver!, as were the contributions of Georgia Brown and Ron Moody (pp. 95–9), who played Nancy and Fagin, respectively.
Chapters four, six, and seven six focus on specific productions: the premiere, the touring productions, the Carol Reed film, and the Cameron Mackintosh reprise at the Palladium. A particular strength of these chapters is Napolitano’s coverage of how financing shaped the performances. Plans for a film version were made early, and Bart and his financiers and collaborators felt the need to balance the international tours, creating buzz but not tainting the waters (p. 160). Napolitano discusses touring productions in Sweden, Israel, and Japan, and especially on Broadway. Clive Revill initiated the role of Fagin on Broadway, amid fears that Ron Moody’s portrayal would taint the play with anti-Semitism (p. 176), and the change elided Oliver!’s celebration of Yiddish theater and Jewish music. Napolitano finds this especially ironic given that Oliver! premiered in the same decade as Fiddler on the Roof, a play that ‘epitomised the Jewish influence on American musical theater’ (p. 178).
Napolitano similarly contextualises the film version of Oliver! Carol Reed had a familial connection to Oliver Twist – Fagin had been a signature role for his father Herbert Beerbohm Tree – and was hired to direct Oliver! based on his experience directing child actors (p. 184). Bart wanted very much to secure Peter Sellers to play Fagin in the film, and Napolitano’s discussion of the ensuing contractual navigations and lawsuits about distribution rights is well worth reading, as it provides a welcome glimpse into the legal and financial negotiations that form the backdrop to the musical’s contentious transition from the stage to the screen (pp. 181–3). His interpretation of the film itself is also engaging, contrasting John Box’s movie set with Kenny’s stage and noting that Mark Lester (who played Oliver) was chosen for his looks and had to have his singing voice dubbed. Critics found Reed’s film very close to David Lean’s, and in addressing this Napolitano argues that these similarities ‘are not simple instances of “plagiarizing” from another movie, but rather an intertextual engagement with the cinematic perception of the Twist narrative as it had been shaped by Lean’ (p. 197). The 1994 reprise at the Palladium, produced by Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Sam Mendes, was more cinematic than the original, a difference Napolitano connects to the popularity of the megamusical in the 1980s. Sustained use of the Kenny set for stage versions had limited productions to the original blocking, but in line with megamusical production values, Mackintosh used a new set, inspired by Reed’s film (pp. 201–2).
Though Oliver! A Dickensian Musical is most valuable for what Napolitano uncovers about the creation, production, context and history of Bart’s musical, he also offers, throughout the book, readings of specific moments and songs. These readings steer clear of mere fidelity comparisons, and offer insights into not only the musical but also what it reveals about Dickens’s novel and the various cultural contexts in which it has been produced. Songs like ‘Oom Pah Pah’ and ‘Consider Yourself’ combine theatrical narrative with music hall conventions, and the lyrics link narratives in the verses with celebratory, catchy repetitions in the chorus (p. 114). Napolitano notes that Dickens may have had reservations about music-hall entertainment, but he nevertheless ‘perceived that the halls were essential to cultivating a sense of community among the working classes’ (p. 113). The former reads Oliver! as a ‘music-hall lament, an intriguing literary and cultural phenomenon that celebrates the music hall as a representation of true Englishness while simultaneously mourning its decline as a metaphor for a larger national deterioration’ (p. 119).
Napolitano sees Dickens’s Oliver Twist as primarily ‘about the power of good to survive in the face of evil,’ while ‘Bart’s adaptation is about the equally enduring power of love’ (p. 135). Building on these distinctions, he goes on to identify four central threads in the plot – Oliver’s search for love; the ‘strange and seemingly fruitless romance between Nancy and Bill’; Fagin’s loneliness and finding love in the community of children he fosters, and the ‘comic and slightly macabre relationship’ between Bumble and Mrs. Corney (p. 135) – and chapter five is structured around readings of each. Dickens’s narrator is analogously reproduced in the orchestra, which like an omniscient narrator cues songs before they begin and thematically links different moments in the text (p. 136). However, while in the novel the narrator often takes centre stage, in Oliver!, the characters are always primary. As a result, Bart’s Oliver is more assertive than the character to be found in the novel. While in that source version Oliver stands out from the beginning — both in the title and as the ‘item of mortality’ at the end of the first paragraph — in Oliver!, he enters the stage as one of the crowed, indistinguishable from the other orphans, and must distinguish himself (p. 137).
Importantly, Napolitano’s readings draw not only on the narrative and music but also on orchestration and the blocking of the actors. The elaborate instrumental harmony of ‘Where Is Love?’ contrasts the vocal simplicity in Oliver’s solo, offering ‘something of an answer to Oliver’s question… love is an intangible, transcendent, spiritual presence’ (pp. 141–2), and the instruction for ‘methodical and mechanical’ movements from the orphans during ‘Food, Glorious Food’ underscores the idea that they are ‘disconsolate automatons’ (p. 138).
Victorian theatre scholars like Sharon Marcus, Carolyn Williams, and Tracy Davis discourage merely relying on the text of a production. 2 In that spirit, Napolitano offers insights into the production and evolution of Oliver! His readings of the set and his explanation of how financing affected the play, and especially the film and touring productions, are particularly admirable. Scholars of nineteenth century theatre may find analogues between the musical and earlier commercial productions. Also, in the epilogue, Napolitano touches on other Dickens musicals, and as a case study, his book complements multi-text studies like Benjamin Poore’s Heritage, Nostalgia, and Modern British Theatre and Sharon Weltman’s work on the Victorians on Broadway. 3 It is also worth noting that since Napolitano focuses on Oliver! without losing sight of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, he contributes to adaptation studies and scholarship by critics including Linda Hutcheon, Diane Sadoff, and Thomas Leitch. 4 Oliver! A Dickensian Musical is essential reading for anyone interested in how Dickens and the Victorians are featured in twentieth and twenty-first century musical theatre, and the detail and depth of research provides a model on which scholars will no doubt build.