Lionel Bart gave us Oliver! with an exclamation mark: Neil Bartlett presents Oliver with a twist. The key to Bartlett's adaptation, first seen at the Lyric Hammersmith last year, is that it recognises and suitably indulges the melodramatic influences of Dickens's tale.
Dickens himself commented that the action of the novel "should, like all murderous melodrama, present tragic and comic scenes in alternation, like the layers of red and white in a rasher of streaky bacon." Liam Steel and Roger Haines's revival is appropriately presented as a warm-hearted homage to Victorian popular theatre, interspersing scenes of moral austerity with music-hall singalongs and Punch and Judy routines.
Yet the directors are determined to play by the book, even to the point of issuing the cast with tomes to carry at all times. This does seem a rather effortful piece of symbolism, suggesting a street panorama of bustling Victorians rushing to return their library books. Occasionally they balance these volumes on their heads, apparently to signify upper-class deportment, yet when they hungrily lap up their texts in the workhouse scene, are we to understand that the starving poor were avid readers?
There's also a darkness to the proceedings that the very young may not appreciate. When Peter MacQueen's frightening, feral Fagin is glimpsed pleading for his neck, one has to concur with the gaoler's assessment that "this is no spectacle for children." And the brutal bludgeoning of Nancy (accomplished with books, of course) proves that the written word can be a most potent weapon.
Yet the most enjoyable moment of a continually surprising production comes when Adam Price's Mr Bumble presents Oliver for sale to the audience and one woman makes him an offer. "I can't accept this," he sniffs, examining the £10 note. "I don't recognise that fellow on the back."
· Until January 21. Box office: 0161-236 7110.
