Review: Oliver Twist, Tobacco Factory Theatres – ‘An inventive, energetic take on a classic with a contemporary Bristol twist; sheer joy to watch’

In recent years of taking my young children to see Christmas productions, Tobacco Factory Theatres have proved themselves to be unfailingly brilliant.

While they have hosted the pure-hearted brilliance of shows like BS3 Santa (returning to a neighbouring postcode for 2023) and Kid Carpet’s Noisy Nativity at the Spielman Theatre, their main house, home-grown productions have captured the ambition, invention, and wonder of a big ticket family show during the festive season.

Performed in the round at the versatile Factory Theatre, they are staged with a necessary intimacy and simplicity which only elevates the sense of theatrical magic that is conjured.

Defender Nyanhete as Oliver

OZ was a wonder; The Snow Queen I adored. It’s an undoubtedly weighty position to fill on the theatrical calendar. So the question is, with Oliver Twist, not a story traditionally associated with warmth, levity or twinkling lights – have they pulled it off?

For me, the answer comes virtually at once, as the ensemble gives us a stirring acapella rendition of the Coventry Carol to accompany the imaginative all-cast framing device that sets up each act.

Full cast in Oliver Twist

In this masterful adaptation from writer Adam Peck and director (and TFT artistic director) Heidi Vaughan, Dickensian London is transported to contemporary Bristol in a cost-of-living crisis.

The uniformly strong cast is largely Bristol-based and their dialogue is peppered with local references, many of them very funny. Between them, there is a good deal of excellent multi-roling, as well as some cleverly gender-swapped roles; the use of doubling allows for the lingering question about familiarity to recur.

Dan Gaisford as Bill Sykes

The decision to lift the story out of Victorian times works brilliantly. Then, as now, it is a landscape replete with the haves and the have nots, and resounding with the prevailing themes of home, belonging, kinship and identity.

The workhouse is sparse and uniformly grey; the children within it drumming on their empty metal porridge bowls, echoing the relentless monotony of life devoid of colour and freedom. In a neat departure from Dickens’ line, Oliver dares to speak for all of them, asking not for himself, but for the group: “we want some more”.

Beverly Rudd as Fagin

Throughout, the narrative is injected with far more fun, warmth and humour than Dickens permits his characters. In this more nuanced world, everyone deserves a shot at redemption and we see all individuals, to an extent, as the product of their circumstances – faced with accepting, or fighting, the hand they’ve been dealt.

Sykes (Dan Gaisford) bristles with pent-up aggression and the ever-present threat of violence, but here – in another cheery deviation from the novel –  makes the honourable decision to free Nancy from the dangers he exposes her to.

Shiquerra Roberston Harris as Nancy

Once the matriarch among her merry gang of pickpockets, and fabulously adorned with bling and bumbags, Fagin (Beverly Rudd) is eventually undone by her own greed. But her former lessons about sharing have not fallen on deaf ears.

Stepping into her shoes as the new leader of the gang, Dodger (Tom Fletcher) gains something of a moral victory; his dutiful sharing out of the loot that Fagin would have taken solely for herself has shades of the end of Trainspotting.

Tom Fletcher as Dodger

Ultimately, as Oliver’s lifelong quest to find family resolves itself, the early axiom ‘big hearts get hurt’ is overturned, and love triumphs over avarice, just as connection is shown to defeat isolation.

As they showed in their previous seasonal collaboration (Travelling Light’s quietly magnificent Belle and Sebastien), Peck, Vaughan and composer Seamas Carey know all the ingredients of a great Christmas show. And in Oliver Twist, they really do give you the lot.

Defender Nyanhete as Oliver and Alice Barclay as Mrs Brownlow

Oliver Twist (age recommendation 7+) is at Tobacco Factory Theatres from December 1-January 21 2024 at 7pm, with some additional matinee shows. Tickets are available at www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com.

All photos: Camilla Adams

Read more: Largely Bristol-based cast to feature in Oliver Twist at Tobacco Factory Theatres

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