Oliver! to return to the West End later this year
The new revival of Oliver!, adapted from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist by Lionel Bart, will transfer to the West End.
Under the direction and choreography of Matthew Bourne, in collaboration with Cameron Mackintosh, the production opens first at Chichester Festival Theatre in July. It will then transfer to the Gielgud Theatre in London.
Mackintosh revealed on BBC Radio 2 that this new production will aim to “go back to the intimate original like in 1960”, adding in a statement: “Oliver! has been part of my life as actor, stage-manager and producer since I first saw it as a schoolboy in 1960, shortly after it opened and began to take the world by storm on stage and screen. The original production design was revolutionary and changed the musical theatre and my career forever.
“Matthew Bourne and I, alongside Sam Mendes, first reinvented Lionel Bart’s masterpiece in 1994 with a huge production at the London Palladium which we restaged in an even grander way in 2009 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Now 15 years later, having staged the largest production of Oliver! ever, we want to return to the scale of the brilliant original with a more intimate production, thrillingly designed by Lez Brotherston, which in a sweepingly imaginative way conjures up Dickensian London.
“Lionel’s irresistible adaptation of Dickens classic story, with its legendary score packed with ‘tunes glorious tunes’ will, we hope, have audiences ‘considering themselves our mate’ when we open at London’s Gielgud Theatre this December with a terrific cast, following a summer season at the Chichester Festival Theatre.”
Oliver! follows orphaned boy of the same name as he escapes the confines of the workhouse and finds refuge in the city’s underworld. Tunes include “Food Glorious Food”, “Consider Yourself”,” You’ve Got to Pick-a-Pocket or Two”, and “As Long As He Needs Me”.
Initial casting for Oliver! in the West End has also been revealed – find out more here.
Oliver! is directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne and co-directed by Jean-Pierre van der Spuy, while the creative team includes designer Lez Brotherston, musical supervisor and conductor Graham Hurman, lighting designers Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs, sound designer Adam Fisher, video designer George Reeve, original orchestrator William David Brohn, orchestral adaptator Stephen Metcalfe and casting directors Felicity French CDG and Paul Wooller CDG with children’s casting director Verity Naughton CDG.
The show will run from 14 December, with priority booking begins on Friday 26 April and full sale from 29 April. It is currently booking until 6 April 2025.
Bourne added: “In 1994, I first worked, as a choreographer, with Cameron Mackintosh on Lionel Bart’s legendary musical Oliver! – the spectacular Palladium revival, directed by Sam Mendes – it launched a collaboration and friendship that has become one of the most important of my career. Nearly 30 years on I’m delighted that Cameron has invited me to direct my first musical and my lifelong relationship with Oliver! continues!
“Along with my regular collaborators Lez Brotherston and Paule Constable, we are taking it back to its roots, inspired by the groundbreaking “poor theatre” designs of Sean Kenny – who revolutionised the modern musical along with Lionel and his Joan Littlewood Theatre Workshop influences. As an East-End Londoner myself l’ve always felt a great affinity with this show – sang all the songs in amateur shows as a kid with my brother and was a regular at Theatre Royal Stratford East as a teenager, even seeing Joan and Lionel in the bar there on several occasions.
“I was lucky enough to work closely with Lionel on the 1994 revival which was an absolute thrill (though in a recently unearthed TV interview when asked about the production he tells the interviewer ‘Some days I wanted to fire the lot of em’!!). But I loved him a lot (and I think he liked me!) and hope to do him and Oliver! proud in 2024.”
