Tonight was our last musical for this season at the Music Theater, at the Off Center Theatre at Crown Center.

Oliver! was the first musical adaptation of a famous Charles Dickens work to become a stage hit. With music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, it première in the West End in 1960, enjoying a long run, a successful Broadway production in 1963 and further tours and revivals. It was made into a musical film in 1968. Major London revivals played from 1994–98 and again from 2008–11.

It’s the story of a boy who becomes an orphan after the death of his mum. He gets shuffled around from place to place, getting exploited wherever possible. He end up getting in with the wrong crowd – a gang of petty thieves – and doing some things which he knows that he shouldn’t (such as picking a pocket or two). It ends on a positive note with Oliver finding happiness under the care of a law-abiding, wealthy family.

This is the crafty criminal Fagin, a combination CEO and dorm monitor who heads up a clutch of pickpockets and Oliver.