Lionel Bart's best-loved work is a parade of numbers so unerringly familiar it's surprising to think that we don't get to hear it all that often. It remains popular with amateur groups, yet the professional rights are guarded as closely as Fagin's collection of silk handkerchiefs.
Such is the reputation of Chris Monks' intimate musical stagings at the New Vic, however, that permission has been granted for a version that, like the hero, is almost all skin-and-bone. Workhouse numbers are down to the point where some of the choral textures threaten to become as thin as the gruel.
Yet there are compensations - not least the fact that Richard Atkinson's reduction reveals Bart's score to be far more subtle than is generally supposed. You begin to notice the gradual darkening of the harmonic palette, with Nancy's jaunty, cockney jig, It's a Fine Life, reprised as a sardonic, almost Kurt Weill-ish cabaret song.
The intimate scale also enables Monks to draw pleasingly natural performances from the young stars - James Hart's Oliver and Jack Bloor's Dodger are never overshadowed by the larger personalities such as Kraig Thornber's frighteningly feral Fagin, Conrad Nelson's bumptious Bumble and Rebecca Jackson's coarse, compassionate Nancy.
It may be Oliver! in miniature, but in terms of staging, singing and execution, workhouse rules apply: you can't ask for more.
· Until January 20. Box office: 01782 717962.
