Oliver Twist			Download the programme.
Players bring energy and ability with a Twist
What have the Royal Shakespeare Company and Grasmere Players got in common? They have both lost a play’s main character to illness. Hamlet is without David Tennant and Grasmere is without its well-rehearsed Oliver Twist. But in true theatrical tradition the play must go on. And for both productions the cast has risen to the occasion.
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		Oliver Twist, the much-loved novel by Charles Dickens, is peopled with characters – from the good and noble to the menacing and seedy who inhabit the underworld of Victorian London. The real story is not a romp with additional music, it’s a tale of survival and hardship in the days before the welfare state and social reform.
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Our hero, Oliver, is born almost on the doorstep of the Workhouse as his young mother, shamed by her unmarried pregnancy, breathes her last and so her genteel background goes unknown. Oliver is raised in the baby farm and then put to work in conditions of child slavery. He has the temerity to ask for “more” of the meagre food rations and, since such an outrageous action has never happened before, is sent before the board and put up for sale. So begins his life of adventures and mishaps as he falls in with the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Nancy and arch villain Bill Sikes. In much the same way that the original novel was published as a series of episodes, so Annie Miller’s adaptation picks out the vital moments of this tale and the production is a series of cameos of Oliver’s progress through rags to eventual security in the house of his grandfather and aunt.
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		With its large cast of Dickensian characters the play will always be a challenge. The Players have cleverly cast actors in several roles, changing their accents, their posture and their clothing to encompass a wide range of characters. Although this did result in some pauses between sets where the pace dropped, we were treated to some wonderful characterisations. Too many to list them all, but to single out a few: Hugh Wright, as Fagin, was the personification of bullying and obsequiousness while Paul Wisse, as the arch villain Bill Sikes, was truly scary and dangerous. Lucy Clarke was an appealing Nancy, living in moral poverty, but aware of goodness outside her surroundings.
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And of course Isaak Gledhill, the replacement Oliver, was surprised but not overawed by the task of taking on the central role. And this is very much in keeping with the ethos of the Players who deserve huge congratulations for their energy and ability to engage and encourage the new generations actors.
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Pam Williamson The Westmorland Gazette, Friday 2nd Janaury 2009.