Neil Bartlett's unmissable adaptation of Oliver Twist, portrayed in "24 scenes with several songs and tableaux", is inventive, dramatic, thoughtful, slick, atmospheric, and hugely enjoyable. Bartlett uses Dickens' own text almost exclusively, and plays wonderfully on the Victorian melodramatic styles that so fascinated Dickens himself. 
      The close-knit company of 13, some whited-out in Shockheaded Peter style, self-consciously put on a production of Oliver Twist in a Victorian Penny Dreadful set, complete with flyropes, trapdoors and footlights, and accompanied by a music hall ensemble of hurdy-gurdy, serpent, voice, percussion and violin. The actors' range is breathtaking Fagin alone (Michael Feast) progresses from pantomime villain, through protective father to Pomfret-like isolation at the last. The troupe change effortlessly in and out of their characters, scenes, costumes, and voices, acting one moment and narrating the next, and hopping deftly in and out of their relationship with the audience. A series of tableaux powerfully suggest the story's underlying violence: Nancy's death blow freezes mid-air, and Oliver's sound thrashings are hidden from view (but not from sound) in a wooden box. 
      The result is that Bartlett brilliantly dramatizes on stage what Dickens achieves in his novel. Nuances of narrative and dramatic tone highlight the moral ambiguities of the Twist story and the succession of distorted families (the workhouse, Fagin's boys, the Brownlows) who try to lay claim to Oliver.
Maya Lester