Boston Globe finds "Heart" in "Oliver!"

The Boston Globe
January 28, 2013

Wheelock’s ‘Oliver!’ steals hearts

Charles Dickens’s bleak tale of a desperate orphan boy in 19th century London hardly seems like inspiring musical theater fare. And yet, what makes the musical “Oliver!” so uplifting is composer Lionel Bart’s emphasis on embracing life, no matter how small its pleasures. The Wheelock Family Theatre’s production of “Oliver!” finds Dickens’s sense of hope and love in the midst of degradation and despair and energizes the story with a terrific vocal ensemble of both children and adults.

In the title role, sixth-grader Charlie Clinton displays an angelic voice with a demeanor to match. His unadorned renditions of both “Where Is Love?” and “Who Will Buy?” create that delicate balance of utter loneliness and hope that fuels the emotional tone of this musical.

Clinton also has the support of every member of the cast of more than 40. From the moment the workhouse orphans march in to get their bowl of gruel singing “Food, Glorious Food” to the final moment of redemption, director Susan Kosoff and her production team attend to every detail.

Matthew T. Lazure’s adaptation of Anthony Hancock’s design is superb: A multi-level set is gray and cobblestoned, with bridges and arches suggesting the dark alleys of London complete with a bit of fog hanging over everything. With the simple addition of a table and chairs, each of the areas becomes an orphanage, a funeral parlor, a pub, or a pickpockets’ lair, with the help of Franklin Meissner Jr.’s lighting. Kosoff uses every inch of the set, creating a sense of movement to a variety of London scenes without slowing the action down for a second. Laurel Conrad’s choreography accents and amplifies important moments without becoming distracting.

Kosoff and musical director Jon Goldberg have also found some impressive talent for key roles. Brittany Rolfs has a truly stunning voice, and gives the saloon gal Nancy a rough edge that makes her willingness to risk everything for Oliver much more poignant. The emotional range Rolfs displays between “It’s a Fine Life” and “As Long as He Needs Me” offers another opportunity for Kosoff to walk that line between hope and despair.

Kosoff casts against type with Jane Staab playing Fagin, the leader of a band of young pickpockets Oliver falls in with. Staab underplays a role that often turns into caricature, and finds more pathos than expected in Fagin’s fear of growing old. Her version of “Reviewing the Situation” starts out humorously, but becomes a little fearful, even desperate. Staab’s choice to play Fagin as a woman passing as a man isn’t jarring, but doesn’t really add much to the story or the character.

But nothing in this production disappoints, with the performances driving everything, especially Jeffrey Sewell as a charming Artful Dodger, Timothy John Smith as an absolutely terrifying Bill Sikes, and the ensemble in “Who Will Buy?” practically stopping the show with their delicious harmonies.

Goldberg’s six-piece orchestra provides the perfect accompaniment for the singing actors, sending the audience out of the theater on a wonderfully upbeat note.

Terry Byrne can be reached at trbyrne@aol.com.

Beverly Creasey reviews A Tale of Two Cities

Revolution And Redemption
By Beverly Creasey

Here’s the reason to celebrate in these difficult economic times: Wheelock Family Theatre is still able to mount large scale productions where many theaters cannot. Their latest is Dwayne Hartford’s adaption of Dickens’ monumental A Tale Of Two Cities (playing through November 29th).

Dickens, who wrote so eloquently about human suffering, was himself victim of circumstance spending time as a child in debtor’s prison and later finding work as a child laborer in a factory. Like Sydney Carton in A Tale Of Two Cities, Dickens served as a lawyer’s clerk before finding success serializing his stories in the newspaper.

A cast of fifteen actors recreate the harrowing stories of ordinary people caught up in events surrounding the French Revolution. Justice and morality are Dickens’ bread and butter and his scope is broad. We meet dozens of characters who swirl around carton and the Manettes, as they move closer and closer to disaster, in the person of relentless Madame Defarge.

Bill Mootos as Sydney Carton functions both as narrator and principal player in Dickens’ sweeping morality tale. He falls in love with Lucie Manette (the lovely Robin Eldridge) and pledges his loyalty to her and her family despite her affection for another. Mootos is the consummate Dickens actor, navigating the delicate balance between melodrama and naturalism. His charismatic performance as the sardonic antihero carries the production. M. Lynda Robinson, too, gets the Dickensian exaggerations just right, as Lucy Manettes’s hilarious, high strung governess.

Alas, opening night goblins got into sound system on Halloween eve, making it hard to hear the actors over swelling music punctuating the mood, movie style. In addition, my theater companion had great difficulty distinguishing between London and Paris as one scene often runs right into the next and many of the actors playing both French and English do so without a change of costume. It takes a few minutes to realize that the Englishman hasn’t travelled to the continent. He’s now an entirely different character (and nationality). Hats are added for the revolutionaries in Act II which is most helpful but a good knowledge of the story ahead of time is your best bet to follow the script.

Carl Rossi Review: A Tale of Two Cities

Dale Place as Marquis de Evremonde

The Wheelock Family Theatre begins it 29th season of family entertainment with A TALE OF TWO CITIES: its production is not only excellent Dickens but makes perfect sense of Brecht’s theories on Epic Theatre, whether intentional or not, and this stirring tale of love and sacrifice during the French Revolution springs onstage like a tiger in Dwayne Hartford’s faithful adaptation, shedding a few minor characters in transit.


How can the most popular Victorian novelist become Brechtian? For starters, Mr. Dickens always wrote of England’s social conditions, her class system and the plight of her poor and downtrodden; in A TALE OF TWO CITIES, he pushed his themes to their logical conclusion: Revolution --- between Mr. Hartford and director Susan Kosoff, here is a theatre-lesson to be taught and learned. Secondly, Mr. Hartford’s characters are the stuff of melodrama --- one-dimensional types who exist to further the plot and no more (sardonic Sydney Carton becomes the “distancing” narrator) --- and Ms. Kosoff’s busy, detailed ensemble has no time to “act”; its job is to keep the wheels of revolution spinning right down to Carton’s closing lines. In other words, the characters are defined by what they DO rather than by what they ARE --- even the sentimental reunion of father and daughter, in the beginning, is but a necessary prelude to the coming storm. Ms. Kosoff’s production may be a THINKING production but it is by no means a cold one, this TALE’s pathos --- so welcome by being so unforced! --- flows whenever its characters are powerless to stop those ever-turning wheels: Carton’s intoxicated pledge to Lucie who is set to marry Darnay; the anonymous street-child crushed beneath the Marquis’ carriage; Dr. Manette’s collapse after reading aloud his own denunciation of Darcy before the tribunal; the silent trembling of a man in line waiting to be guillotined while, behind him, Carton and the Seamstress have their transcending love-duet; the slicing sounds of the offstage guillotine as, one by one, the victims make their exit. No, not cold at all, but THRILLING, and held together by Jane Staab’s Madame Defarge who, step-by-step, becomes a demented Fury incarnate: ah, her chilling stance when she realizes that the hated Darnay is not the last of his line, after all; her battle to the death with Miss Pross.... Thrilling, passionate theatre of the People and for the People --- you can’t get more Brechtian than that, what?

My heartfelt congratulations (and gratitude) to Ms. Kosoff and her ensemble for a job superbly done --- some of her actors continue to do their familiar thing, but caught up in this sweep of events, they seem brand new --- and to Anita Fuchs for her stark, functional scaffolding and suggested guillotine and to Lisa Simpson for her brisk period costumes, and so on and so on, down to the friendly ticket-takers. This is one evening of children’s theatre where the adults may well outnumber the youngsters, audience-wise (go, ye greybeards, and become children, yourselves, again!), and it runs throughout November, departing just before the annual army of Scrooges set up shop in December.