Oliver! revival?

I was just listening to the recording from the 1994 London revival and forgot how wonderful this score is! Anyone know if there has been talk recently of a revival? I'd love to see a big, lush production in Lincoln Centre

I assume Cameron Mackintosh holds the first class rights to Oliver, since he produced all the London revivals of it. I'm surprised that production never crossed the pond. Maybe he and others were scared to do it in New York after the disastrously short-lived 1984 mounting with Ron Moody and Patti LuPone.

I saw the 2009 London revival (of the 1994 revival) and loved it. I remember reading how it was too expensive to produce on Broadway due to the number of children needed in the cast just for the opening scene. Not sure if that's true. I can imagine they could cut it down to the number of girls used in Annie, but then, Annie's never had a profitable revival on Broadway, so...

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SomethingPeculiar said: "I assume Cameron Mackintosh holds the first class rights to Oliver, since he produced all the London revivals of it. I'm surprised that production never crossed the pond. Maybe he and others were scared to do it in New York after the disastrously short-lived 1984 mounting with Ron Moody and Patti LuPone."

He partnered up with NETworks and sent it out as a non-Equity tour back around 2003 or 2004, claiming that it was too expensive to do as an Equity production over here because of the number of children in the cast

SomethingPeculiar said: "If you distill Oliverdown to its most basic elements, it's a combination ofMy Fair Lady, Les Mis, Annie,andFiddler–– all of which are, arguably, more interesting or "sexy" musicals (and more frequently revived).

Tonally, it's also tough:you could sanitizethe darkness for a family audience and alienate the critics/adults, or you could go really dark and anger the families.And now that Broadway has alotof kid-friendly shows, why would you take the fam toOliverwhen you could seeFrozenorAnastasiaor Wicked orAladdin?"



Because OLIVER is far more interesting? Why sanitize? I've been watching Oliver (the film) since I was an elementary school kid. I think it was suprisingly "woke" with the material considering when it was made.

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You could absolutely reimagine the workhouse and have only ten children in Food Glorious Food who double as the pick pockets in Fagins gang but it would need to be staged in a smaller house than the show usually plays at for the more intimate presentation to work. Cameron Mackintosh wouldnt go near a re-imagining like this as for it to really work and not be viewed as cynical by the critics, it would need to be a new production (normally there are children who supplement the gang in the opening so that there are twenty/thirty of them) A scaled down version would, at the least, need the opening re-choreographed and redesigned - even if everything else stayed close to the West End revivals design but thats going to look and smell like a cash cow to any reviewer and without a fresh look at the show overall it would be a risk.

Even though Cam Mac is now all about downscaling his shows to make more money, he wouldnt open this a reimagined version of the show on Broadway because of its track record. Therefore hed only bring it to New York if he already had a physical production that worked in the UK and the expectation of audiences in the UK is that the show feels big (you dont pay the workshouse children in the UK) so he has no reason to want to scale down it down for that market.

He has the rights. So unfortunately dont expect to see it in New York anytime soon.

dramamama611 said: "Because OLIVER is far more interesting? Why sanitize? I've been watching Oliver (the film) since I was an elementary school kid. I think it was suprisingly "woke" with the material considering when it was made."

Oh, I don't disagree that it's more interesting -- but I'm more thinking of the broad interests of the general public and "kids today." If the recent Annie and Fiddler revivals couldn't recoup and run much more than a year, I have a hard time seeing Oliver doing well.

Also, the stage rights could be held up with the movie remake (directed by Tommy Kail, written by Danny Strong, and starring Ice T as Fagin) -- IF it ever actually happens.

Not sure if this has been said, but I assume part of the reason its cost-prohibitive is that child actors earn standard Equity salaries here; in the UK they do not.

^^^^ One would think "transpiration" would be payment enough!

(Sorry, N&C, I couldn't resist. I make tons of typos myself, but my errors rarely excite the imagination as much as that one word! I agree with you that Lithgow would be an excellent Fagin. I am bemused by a proposed movie remake where they take the Jewish criminal stereotype and turn it into the African-American criminal stereotype. How "woke" of them!)

Updated On: 1/24/19 at 10:12 PM