| Nicely done. It’s an odd show to start—and time has made it more peculiar—but maybe the best way to manage the tonal lurches in OLIVER! is to not try to manage them at all, let cruelty and sweetness marry and leave it at that. And so it goes: OLIVER! is mean but merry. And really not so far from Dickens in that. This production—staged readings being, apparently, a thing of the past at Encores!—is fleet and unfancy. It gets the job done efficiently; no pockets picked or children harmed—and unhealed anyway—in the making. Nancy, though, now that’s another story: NANCY! anyone? |
