Preview: Oliver! the Musical

Cameron Mackintosh’s musical production of Oliver! – a perennial favourite in London’s West End – is coming to Scotland on a tour that requires meticulous planning, chaperones, frequent cast rotations – and enough food to feed an army of children. By Kelly Apter

FOOD, glorious food. For the emaciated orphans in Oliver Twist, there was precious little of it, save for the ubiquitous gruel. In sharp contrast to those ill-used children in Charles Dickens’s social commentary, though, young performers treading the boards in the musical version couldn’t be better fed.

It’s an irony not lost on Neil White, company manager for the production of Oliver!, and the man responsible for the incredibly complex logistics that drive it. But it’s not just the quantity of food that sets these children apart from their 19th-century counterparts, it’s the level of care that goes with it.

“In Edinburgh we’ll need 1,345 children’s meals over the course of four weeks,” White says backstage at Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre, where the show plays before it travels to Edinburgh. “At lunchtime, when we buy sandwiches for everyone, we have a big list of what each child will and won’t eat, and any allergies they may have. And we always try to get them to eat vegetables.

“When we were staffing the show, the key thing for us was that they all had to like working with children. Whether it was the technical staff, wardrobe, wigs, sound, everybody has to be kid-friendly. The people in the crew have to moderate their language, and we’ve all got to be very aware of the children at all times.”

In this difficult financial climate, a tour of Oliver! is not something any theatre company undertakes lightly. At one point during the Edinburgh run, White will have 76 children in the building, comprising the current show’s cast, local Edinburgh children who join the ensemble for four weeks, and young performers from Norwich – rehearsing the show before it transfers down there. All of this blasts a pretty enormous hole in the company budget.

“Children are very expensive. We’ve got extra staff in almost all the backstage areas, and we have to budget every week that the children will be in a minimum of a three-star hotel, because that’s what the licensing authorities say we have to provide for them.”

The company also has to cover tutoring, to ensure each child receives the required amount of education each week, chaperones to look after them day and night on tour and in transit between venues and home, as well as the food. And they all have to be paid. At one point, White will have 108 children on the payroll, ranging in age from seven to 15.

Yet without children, Oliver! doesn’t exist. When they walk on stage at 7.30pm, hungrily clasping a tin bowl, performing Matthew Bourne’s choreography in perfect unison and belting out Lionel Bart’s Food, Glorious Food, it’s clear they’re worth every penny.

A chorus of local children has spent the past few weeks being put through their paces, while the key roles of Oliver and the Artful Dodger are never cast without the approval of the man behind the money, producer Cameron Mackintosh.

“He has the final say in all the children’s casting,” says White, “and the standards for that have to be kept very high. This isn’t just Oliver!, it’s Cameron Mackintosh’s Oliver!, so the standards for everything are higher. Instead of having seven musicians in the pit, we have 15, our big ensemble numbers have 55 performers in them, we use 400 props. It’s like doing three times a normal show.”

Two of the boys who have passed that difficult Mackintosh test are brought to meet me in a backstage dressing room. Each child works three days on, six days off, and Harry Polden and Lewis Smith are just about to start their shift.

Like the rest of the child cast, they’ll get up at 7am each day, have breakfast in the hotel, then head to the theatre to start their tutoring. If it’s a matinee day, they’ll perform one show at 2.30pm and another at 7.30pm, walking off-stage just after 10pm that night.

“That’s why we do it in 3-4 day blocks,” says White, “so we don’t tire them out completely.” For Polden and Smith, tiredness is the last thing on their minds. They’re enjoying themselves too much to care.

“I love everything about it,” says 13-year-old Smith, who plays cheeky chappie Charlie Bates, a key member of Fagin’s gang. “I love coming back to Oliver! after being at school, I look forward to it all the time.”

It’s an excitement tinged with slight sadness. Both boys admit to missing their families while they’re away, as well as the constant round of goodbyes that accompanies the move from venue to venue, where a new set of local children always comes on board.

“We’ve toured to Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham and Southampton,” says Lewis, “and we’ve all got along really well with the kids that join us. And at the end of our time at that venue, we’re really sad to see them go, because we’ve made such good friends with them.”

According to 12-year-old Polden, he’s made “friends for life” working on the show. Treading the boards with adult professionals hasn’t hurt his burgeoning career, either. Having played the part of Oliver in London, he’s also learning about life on the road.

“It’s been really good experience performing with great actors like Brian [Conley] and Cat [Simmons],” he says, “and going away on tour, away from the West End, has been good, too. It’s pretty hectic, especially when you have to do two shows in one day, but it’s fun, and you get a lot out of it.”

Inevitably, the Oliver! boys can’t stay with the show forever, especially when nature takes its course. “We’ve had to say goodbye to two Olivers on this tour, and we lost a Dodger the other week,” says White. “Because 13 and 14-year-old boys’ voices break. It’s really sad for them and us, but it’s part of growing up.”

For now, though, Polden, Lewis and the rest of the children are having a ball. And, apart from one rehearsal, where the children were all given gruel (“so they’d know what it was like”), they’re all extremely well fed.

They are, however, kept away from chocolate (“It’s bad for our throats when we’re singing, and the little ones can get a bit hyper,” Polden tells me) until the final night party at each venue, when the children have the kind of splurge Dickens’s workhouse orphans could have only dreamed about. “They can eat anything they like at that party,” says White, “it’s sugar central.”

• Oliver! is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, from 30 May until 23 June. oliverthemusical.com