Oliver!
By Lionel Bart
Directed by Wade Elkins
Assistant Directed by Castor Rosencrantz Kent
Choreography by Jessica Fox, Lexi Hoover, and Wade Elkins
Stage Management by Emily Tomasch
Scenic Design by Sara Ebrahimi
Costume Management by Esther Yali-Williams
Music Direction by Molly Prudenti
Lighting Design by Tiegue Hardesty
Prop Management by Ryan Perry
Intimacy Choreography and Dramaturgy by Castor Rosencrantz Kent
Fight Choreography by Brian Evans and Sarah Stepleman

In this classic and tangled tale about agency, power, and choice, a child is tossed by the waves of fate from fraught situation to fraught situation as he unwittingly navigates a violent, corrupt, and carceral 1850s England.

I read Dickens’ Oliver Twist after being brought on to this project, a mere month before rehearsals began. Both Bart and myself are Jewish theatre artists, and the difference in treatment given to Fagin in the play versus the book was stark. In the book, Fagin is sentenced to death and forgotten (after being referred to nearly exclusively as “the Jew” in early printings of Dickens’ story). Bart, however, crafted a multidimensional character who, in the last breath of the show, makes the final decision of the play. In the light of this significant departure from the source material, when Fagin wonders if someone can change, I hear him asking about something broader than an individual’s capacity for growth. Can someone change when fewer opportunities are afforded to them because of their circumstance of birth, of who they immutably are? Will the world allow them to change? Oliver gets his happy ending by circumstance of birth, after all; what of Fagin? Through staging Reviewing the Situation (Reprise) ambiguously, we allowed the audience to come to their own conclusion and, perhaps, in lending the audience that agency, spurred them to consider the ways in which they do or do not allow others in their communities to turn over new leaves.

Featuring: Raquel De Abreu, Angelina Brenya, Elisabeth Clapp, August “Auggie” Cornish, Eli Cornish, Abby Cox, Katya Dobrynin, Laura Dobrynin, Lucy Dodd, Emaline Duquette, Quinn Duquette, Gwyneth Gaunt, Jeremy Hayes, Sarah Johnson, Heath Kinison, Molly McHugh, Draper Moore, Georgia Nelson, Molly Nixon, Nate Padilla, Julien Prudenti, Madi Stein, Sarah Stepleman, Heather Stump, Esteban Jino Vazquez, Paige Weir, Pepper Westenbarger, Susan Westenbarger, Alice Whealey

The Forum Theatre
Athens, OH