"And I agree it is baffling that more critics aren't more familiar with both the original stage show – one of the most-produced shows ever, along with being probably the single biggest European stage musical to sucessfully cross the Atlantic until Phantom and Les Miz – and the movie – one of only 10 musicals to ever win Best Picture (and only 5 of which were based on pre-existing Broadway shows)."
But when was the last major production of OLIVER! that most of these critics would have attended? There was a non-Equity tour of the Cameron MacIntosh production, but even that was probably 20+ years ago. Have there been a lot of major regional revivals of this show? I think MacIntosh has famously tied up the rights for major productions for a long time now. I don't think major critics have the time or interest to attend non-professional productions or even lower level professional productions because they're already out most nights of the week.
And the same thing applies to the movie, I think. Sure, it won Best Picture, but that was 50+ years ago and it's not as if it has ever been a television perennial like THE SOUND OF MUSIC or THE WIZARD OF OZ. I think it would have been a very easy film to miss for critics who weren't alive when it premiered.
For myself, I'm not a critic, but I love musical theatre and I've seen exactly one production of OLIVER!, an amateur production in Tuscaloosa, AL when I was a kid in the early 1980's. I saw the movie once in the early days of VHS, probably in the mid-late 80's. |
