Oliver Twisted
Created and Produced by Conartists
Featuring in NZ Comedy festival 2014
Staged upstairs at the Horse and Trap Public House
Enfield Road, Mt Eden Auckland
Tuesday 29 April 2014 until Saturday 03 May, 2014
Reviewed on 01 May, 2014
Published on http://www.theatreview.org.nz
Charles Dickens wrote ‘Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.’
Charles Dickens
He might well have been talking about Conartists production of ‘Oliver Twisted’, a long form improvisation which owes a lot to Mr Dickens and not overly much to his great serialised novel ‘Oliver Twist’ or, as it was aptly subtitled, ‘The Parish Boy’s Progress’. The journey changes every performance because the audience sets the parameters but nevertheless what was created reeked of Dickens’ London, the workhouse and a Victorian England filled with faux humbuggery, podsnappery and bumbledom.
Sure, ‘Oliver Twisted’ has an orphanage, a handsome, down-on-his-luck hero (Peter Muller’s plays this somewhat maladroit fellow) and there are a couple of meanish, pick-pockety kids but there was no Fagin – Penny Ashton’s epiphany-prone orphanage matron came close – and Bill Sykes dog was missing in action. Even Lori Dungey’s wonderful cameo rat couldn’t replace Bull’s Eye the bull terrier, a sympathy grabber if ever there was one.
All this mattered not one jot.
Madeleine Lynch
There is, however, plenty more that is acutely Dickensian, which is pretty dashed clever when you consider that satirising a work which is itself a satire should be a seriously tricky proposition but in the hands of these Conartists it seems easy-peasy
The choice of venue – upstairs in a public house called the Horse and Trap – is singularly appropriate and provides the audience who are seated, and served, at tables with excellent sight lines and even a hearing-impaired, older person like myself can hear almost every word.
The set is deliciously functional.
Three clothes stands decked with bonnets, hats, shawls and the like, a tall rose-tree-in-a-pot that somehow finds itself integral to almost every scene, a couple of raised, workhouse-like forms, a pair of smallish blackboards on stands all in sepia/tan tones provide a fitting Victorian backdrop to the riotous action that fills this hour upon the stage all of which is singularly reminiscent of a Fezziwig Christmas gathering, that drawing room style entertainment highly fashionable in Dickens’ day.
The characters created by this excellent seven strong ensemble can best be described as stereotypical but, more often than not, they surprise with unanticipated depth. Lindsey Brown as the naïve heroine Lady Sarah Goodheart is touchingly Pickwickian in her simplicity and decency. Her singing – also a delight – was used to provide a major shift in character emphasis for three of the netherworld characters played to the hilt by the wicked Penny Ashton, the somewhat austere Madeleine Lynch and Marc Sautelet in naughty Artful Dodger mode.
Lindsey Brown
Peter Muller, the audience choice to play the heroic lead, is a gentleman of no fixed ability named ironically, also at audience behest, Heathcliff Emerald-Crunch.
Peter Muller
Emerald-Crunch, anticipating a considerable inheritance from the passing of his mother, is shocked to find from his jolly old Dad (Lori Dungey) that there is no legacy and that he is, to all intents and purposes, broke. Haunted ceaselessly by the terrifying ghost of his mother (Clare Kelso) he finds a job, finds love and finds an abode before rescuing his beloved Lady Sarah from the rat-infested basement of a London tavern where she is held by villains awaiting a fate worse than death – transportation to Australia. Observing this, his mother has a massive change of heart and shares with him where her secret stash of goodies is to be found and all ends happily. She has, after all, experienced hell, didn’t care for it much and this is her ticket to warmer, more blissful climes.
Lori Dungey
The whole thing is monumentally silly, and it’s meant to be, but underlying the silliness and simple joy that Conartists generate there are finely crafted performances and a slick understanding of narrative progression that never lets the ball drop.
OK, never say never, but when there are minor glitches the resolution is invariably funnier than anything that has gone before. There seems to be little that audiences enjoy more than seeing actors smartly extricate themselves from some nightmarish web woven for them by fellow cast members and it must be said that Conartists are remarkably good at engaging with their audiences when these minor blips occur.
Clare Kelso
There are some great lines the most memorable for me being Penny Ashton’s hateful matron who, on hearing Lady Sarah sing ‘Ave Maria’, gazes into the distance and croons ‘I’d better go and change me ways’ and immediately goes and does just that. Ashton is at her glittering best in this work.
Penny Ashton
Small character gems – and there are plenty of them – include the classic London villains Scuttlebum and Dogsbreath, Madeleine Lynch’s lanky coachman and newcomer Marc Sautelet’s one-legged crim-with-a-heart but, for me, the evening belonged to Lori Dungey, Clare Kelso and the irrepressible and incredibly gifted Penny Ashton whose collective verve, talent and simple narrative ability within a given style and form ensured a fun-filled and immensely entertaining evening for everyone, themselves included.
Marc Sautelet
In Stave 2 of ‘A Christmas Carol’ Dickens wrote ‘There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.’
He was right, of course, and Conartists understand this sublimely well and carry on that tradition with gusto and flair.
We are, each and every one of us, the better for it.
dykiegirl 