Review: Bold, dark and brutal Oliver Twist adaptation worth five stars

Oliver Twist is Leeds Playhouse’s latest collaboration with Ramps on the Moon, a consortium of theatres committed to putting D/deaf and disabled artists and audiences at the centre of their productions.

Bryony Lavery’s specially commissioned adaptation is bold, dark and brutal. It is sinister and graphically descriptive, but at the same time, elicits a feeling of compassion from its audience and a deeper understanding of the cruelties of exclusion. Be warned this is an Oliver Twist like you’ve never seen before.

The adaptation looks at the story in terms of Deaf history in the Victorian era. It explores the issues of denial of communication because sign language was effectively banned in 1880. Lavery’s play is about Oliver (Brooklyn Melvin) a young deaf orphan, born in the workhouse who joins a gang of street thieves led by Mrs Fagin (Caroline Parker) who runs, as she calls it a Youth Employment Scheme. Her band of thieves are blind, deaf and disabled and live by stealing and pickpocketing from the well-to-do, but soon they become Oliver’s family.

Amy Leach’s production is fluid and seamless. Leach gets the balance of the relationships between the characters just right and uses different methods of storytelling bordering on brilliance. It is a great ensemble piece and its players work tirelessly to give superb believable, crafted performances full of energy and passion.

Full marks to Hayley Grindle on her brilliantly designed heavy iron scaffold multifunctional set that becomes a workhouse, court, gateway, cellar, and rooftop and creates the tone for the whole production.

Set against a winter landscape bleakly and moodily lit, with foreboding heavy gates, surrounded by lengths of rope, that conjure up a feeling of imminent danger, it has an eerie Victorian visual element. This is a production that will leave you thinking about problems we still have today long after you leave the theatre.

To March 21.