Re-Viewing the Situation: Staging Neo-Victorian Criminality and Villainy after Oliver!

Benjamin Poore

Re-Viewing the Situation: Staging Neo-Victorian Criminality and Villainy after Oliver!

Theatre, Film, TV and Interactive Media

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This essay addresses the difficulties that modern theatrical adaptors of Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1837-8) have had in following Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! (1960). In particular, it compares the strategies employed by two recent stage productions which seek to recontextualise the figures of Fagin, Sikes and Nancy: The Mystery of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist by Neil Bartlett. In theorising melodrama as having particular requirements for its plot and characters, the essay examines the ways in which the relationship between villainy and criminality is reconfigured in Bart’s musical. The essay also compares the ways in which villainy and criminality have
been represented on stage in popular adaptations of two other Victorian novels, Nicholas Nickleby and The Woman in White.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	121-147
Journal	Neo-Victorian Studies
Volume	2
Issue number	1
Publication status	Published - Feb 2009

Keywords

adaptation, Neil Bartlett, Simon Callow, crime, criminality, Charles Dickens,

Cite this

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