OLIVER TWIST (Neil Bartlett)

Neil Bartlett displays his proficiency with page-to-stage transformations in this adaptation of OLIVER TWIST. Using Dickens’s prose for the two-act play’s dialogue and narrative commentary, Bartlett boldly mixes contrasting shades of grotesque comedy and 19th-century melodrama in painting the tale of a waif who escapes miserable servitude to an undertaker only to fall into a den of youthful thieves manipulated by Fagin, their crafty elder.
Some of the plot’s knots have been cleverly cut resulting in an organic piece and at the same time a loyal, sombre retelling.