In “Oliver!,” which opened Friday at Manhattan Arts Center, a sweet young boy makes people reevaluate their questionable choices and dream of a better life.
The lovable (and unlovable) criminals of the show struggle through their conflicted feelings about committing crime to survive, and Oliver’s innocence makes them wonder if they can turn their lives around.
“We see Oliver rise to the occasion and still have so much good,” said Andrew Smith, who plays Fagin, the leader of Oliver’s new group.
“Oliver!” is the stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” the story of an orphan boy who falls in with a band of young pickpockets and robbers in London in the early 1800s. The 1968 film adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Smith said that during this era people had to resort to extreme measures just to live, and Fagin and the boys he recruits to steal are just trying to get food and shelter.
“In that period there were a lot of really hard decisions,” he said. “It was hard to live and thrive unless you were born into it.”
Smith said he thinks audiences can relate to the desperation Oliver, played by Harrison Thomas, and the other characters feel and being put in the difficult position of choosing between staying on the straight and narrow and staying alive.
“We’ve all been put into a situation where we’ve been uncomfortable, been afraid, and had to rely on ourselves for something we didn’t know we had,” Smith said.
Stealing offered a middle ground between making it rich, which was nearly impossible for these boys, and starving. Fagin is trying to help, Smith said, but also introducing them to a life of crime and profiting off their labors, a conflict that eventually plagues him.
“He’s the underbelly trying to give a choice for these orphans and the disadvantaged,” Smith said. “Fagin gives them one step up and is then profiteering.”
Smith played the Artful Dodger, a central member of the band of thieves, when he was a teenager. That role in this production is filled by his daughter, Aubrianna.
For the orphans, the group becomes their family, with Fagin at the top alongside Nancy, a former member of the gang.
“He’s exploiting these children but he cares about them,” Smith said. “He’s their father figure.”
Nancy also serves as a sort of mother or older sister figure for the children. Nancy is in an abusive relationship with Bill Sikes, a burglar who works with Fagin. The children, and Oliver in particular, bring out a nurturing quality in her, said Alicia Willard, who plays Nancy.
“She puts up with a lot of negativity and violence while still managing to keep this humanity about her,” Willard said.
She said Nancy seems to have more class than the others, but still can’t quite lift herself out of the cycle of poverty and abuse.
“She’s clearly conflicted but it’s the only life she’s ever known,” she said.
Willard said Nancy can tell when they meet that Oliver is not like the other children. She recognizes a polite kindness in him.
“He has manners, which is different than the others,” “That instantly gets her attention.”
Willard said working with the young cast is a fun experience because she can see them learn to make their own acting choices and come out of their shells.
Willard said Oliver’s kindness inspires kindness in others, and ultimately that is the moral of the show.
“How does Oliver survive?” she said. “It’s through people being kind to him.”
Performances are Saturday and Sunday, April 29-May 1 and May 6-8 at Manhattan Arts Center. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Sunday performances begin at 2 p.m.