Neil Bartlett's adaptation of Oliver Twist was Charles Dickens meets Monty Python: eloquently spoken and bitingly hilarious. It wasn't a laugh-out-loud success, but it had all the subtle humor of everything that I love in a show. Dickens has always been long-winded and kind of dull to me; I didn't know he had humor in him. I am overjoyed to know that I was wrong.
The Artful Dodger was delightfully demonic. Every time he took the stage, there was no one else on it. I had heard that he was shocking, almost unbelievably impressive prior to seeing it, but when Robbie Tann took the stage as the narrator, I didn't see the greatness that everyone had mentioned. But with the addition of a top hat and the most fantastic coat I've ever seen, he was suddenly something else entirely from great. I couldn't take my eyes off from him. I couldn't believe how good he was for being anyone, let alone an actor in Vermont. At first I thought there was no way he could keep up the level of his performance all the way through, but he never dropped it. Color me impressed with him. He made Charles Dickens sexy. That IS unbelievable.
My only complaint, if I had to make one (which I suppose I don't, but will anyway), was that Oliver Twist was the weakest character in the production. I've never read the novel, only seen the cheesy musical, so I don't know if he suppose to be weak or not, but I definitely would have liked the play better without him. Or her, I guess in this case. It didn't bother me that the actor was an actress as much as the actress wasn't much of an actress. Not in comparison to the others, anyway. It was clever of the director to disguise this fact by giving her less stage time and many less lines.
The real star of the show, however, was the accordion. I have always had a warm place in my heart for the accordion. When I was just knee high to a grasshopper, I used to beg my parents to let me play the "squishy woo thing", but I was never given the opportunity to learn. So when David Symons took the stage during Sunday's matinee performance of Oliver Twist carrying an accordion, I knew I was going to love him. I'm glad to say that I was not wrong.
Symons may be better known around the town of Burlington, Vermont as a taxi driving master or the guy rocking out on Church Street to the beat of his own orchestra, but in this production, he was seen as nothing else but the musical backbone of the production. Not only did he perform the musical numbers as a member of the chorus and provide most of the sound effects for the show (accompanied by Emma Gonyeau on the violin), but he seemed to pull instruments out of the thin air to play throughout the show.
If the accordion was not enough for the audience, at one point he danced down the aisle in the audience, wearing the accordion across his chest while he played the trumpet (and only messed up one note impressively enough). He then danced across the stage to resume his place beside Gonyeau at the side of the stage. And if that wasn't enough, he then began to play the xylophone, which took his a step back for me because I used to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the xylophone when I was five, but then he shot him forward again when he turned to the keyboard, then back to the accordion, back to the keyboard, and so forth.
The number and quality of instruments that he played aside, the thing that was the most impressive about Symons' performance was the way he played each instrument. Every time I would look over him, he would appear to be in his own little world. He didn't just play the notes, he created them, and even on the final performance of the show, it seemed fresh, like he was just now discovering the notes and enjoying how they sounded. He was completely engulfed in the sound of his own music and it was a beautiful spectacle for the show.
I was able to suspend my disbelief into thinking that the story was unfolding in front of me for the first time because of Symons' performance. He was so convincing that he was playing those instruments and the music that was in the play for the first time and enjoying himself in doing so that I was able to enjoy them for the first time, as well. I found myself believing that he was a musician in the 1800's more than anyone else in the show was from that time period, and that feeling alone made the show a success for me.
Note: Oliver Twist was put on by the Vermont Stage Company at the Flynn Space in Burlington, Vermont. It ended its run on Sunday afternoon.
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