The Stage

Chit chat - Please sir, we want some more space

Published Tuesday 6 January 2009 at 12:20 by Tabard

Back to Dickensian London - a feeling any Time Lord knows only too well - and Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Dury Lane. Because child licensing laws have been rejigged since the last time the show was in London back in 1994, Cameron Mackintosh has had to employ three sets of child actors, as opposed to the two he used last time in rotation.

If that didn’t make it difficult enough, Mackintosh has decided to up the number of children in the show, anyway. He explains: “I decided - rather madly - to have 50 children, which is more than twice what we had at the Palladium. They sort of come out everywhere, out of the pit, all over the theatre.”

This means that Oliver! has 150 children treading the boards at some point or other. Something which the producer admits has been a “logistical nightmare” and, in fact, meant that the first preview had to be cancelled when one of the crews wasn’t quite ready.

It also rather limited the number of places that the cast and crew could rehearse. In the end, they - somewhat appropriately - found themselves in an old East End gin factory, otherwise known as Three Mill Studios.

At the first read-through there were around 200 performers present. You couldn’t fit that in a Tardis.