Eric Medina and Marc Westmalle Photo courtesy of Foothill Music Theatre

"To be sure, it is a work of fiction, An impossibility, an anomaly, an apparent contradiction; For it finds hope where all hope was past."

After all, it is 1837 in an England where the usual fate of young boys of the lower classes was a life of horrific workhouses for mere pennies earned per week, of punishing indentureships leading to nowhere, and probably eventually of crime in dangerous streets in order to survive. And if a boy is an orphan, as was Oliver Twist, in fact to have hope of anything better would normally be fiction at its best, unless he was lucky enough to be created by a certain Charles Dickens.

That famous tale of a boy's harrowing journey from destitution to finding a loving family and home–first written as a newspaper serial over several years by Dickens and later published as a three-volume novel–has seen dozens of stage, film, and cartoon adaptations (including the 1960 stage musical Oliver! with songs like "Food, Glorious Food" and "Consider Yourself" that have become classics).

In 2004, Neil Bartlett penned a script much darker and grittier than the well-known musical and much more in keeping with Dickens' original work, with his adapted Oliver Twist retaining many of the actual words of Dickens. With a cast of sixteen who each play multiple parts, Foothill Music Theatre has ambitiously staged Bartlett's adapted play in a production in which two dozen scenes compress the massive novel into short vignettes that do not shy from focusing on the somber, harsh, and often abusive conditions of Victorian England.

As in the novel, the story begins with a baby's birth to a young woman found roaming the streets with no identification (and no wedding ring). After she dies in childbirth, the boy spends his first years in an orphanage where a bowl of gruel is his daily fare. When on his tenth birthday the other boys coax him to ask for a second bowl, Oliver's request lands finds him appearing before a non-sympathetic judge with a fate of being sold for a mere three pounds to an abusive undertaker. A fight with the undertaker's apprentice who insults Oliver's deceased mother lands him locked in a trunk before he escapes to walk seventy miles to London, where he hopes to be safe from being detected and returned. Along the way, the starving and exhausted boy meets Jack Dawkins, calling himself "The Artful Dodger," who quickly befriends him and promises to protect him.

But of course, most of us know what happens next, as Oliver lands in a house of boys who are converted into pickpocketing thieves by a bent-shouldered, bearded old man named Fagin. While he will get a sausage or two to eat, Oliver's bed will be the floor and his education deal with how to ease an expensive handkerchief or a wallet from an unsuspecting victim's pocket. Something in young Oliver's genes balks at this new life of being a thief, one Fagin tells him, "It's a jolly life while it lasts." But before Oliver can escape Fagin's plan for him, there are many more twists and turns and near-death disasters.

From the the pages of Dickens appear a host of grimy and gruesome, bizarre, and bombastic characters who are often frightening while also (for us, at least) quirky and amusing. The barking bellows and boisterous manners of the orphanage's Mr. Bumble are embodied by a larger-than-life Korwin Rodgers in an over-sized, three-pointed hat. The squawky, meaner-than-mean cook of the orphanage, Mrs. Corney, deliciously played by Susan Hogben, later becomes the Mrs. to Mr. Bumble (although she despises him with vengeance). Their bumbling appearances throughout the story, as played so well by this pair of thespians, quickly remind one of the thieving, abusive but hilarious Monsieur and Madame Thénardier in Les Misérables.

Nero Montufar is Mr. Sowerberry, the slightly sympathetic master who takes Oliver on as an apprentice at his mortuary, but his mean-to-the-core wife, played with hiss and venom by Emma Bowman, and Noah (Bryant Cebreros), an apprentice up to no good, soon turn Sowerberry against poor Oliver, sending the boy into a locked trunk and then into the escape to London.

Tiffany Walters is the cunning, crafty Artful Dodger who takes Oliver under his wing but really does so in order to win favor with Fagin by bringing him a boy "with the face of an angel"–the kind of innocence that should make pickpocketing a cinch on the streets of London. Walters also serves as our ongoing Narrator, bringing big eyes that pop with energy as he unveils the next series of events to plague poor Oliver.

Marc Westmalle's appearance as Fagin is like a page from Dickens' original novel come to life, matching one's memory of drawings of this grisly, bristly bearded, hunched-over ancient with long, arthritic fingers sticking out of half-fingered gloves. His syrupy sweet initial treatment of the boy whose face he believes is worth "hundreds of pounds for me" cannot last long, as his hissing and his ready cane are just waiting to turn on Oliver when he thinks the boy might alert the authorities to his thieving empire.

Joining the Artful Dodger in Fagin's gang of boys are Charley Bates (Bryan Cebreros), Toby Crackit (Evren Johansen), and Tom Chitling (Brayan Becerra), each and all played with evident mean-streaks and cruelty and yet boyish ways of being sudden pals and pranksters. Also in Fagin's network of thieves is one of his trainees who now seems to scare even Fagin–the vicious and viperous Bill Sikes played dripping with evil and dark intent by Eric Capi. His girlfriend and also a Fagin protégé, Nancy, is not near the sweet woman we see in the movie musical version. Nancy is a street-smart and tough woman who at one point kidnaps Oliver to force him back to Fagin's, but she does turn out to have a heart that will cost her life. Both the dark and the redeeming sides of Nancy are portrayed with full aplomb by Amanda Korkunis.

A victim of Fagin's gang of pickpockets, the distinguished bookworm and man of means Mr. Brownlow (Lian Malla), somehow realizes the accused Oliver is innocent and convinces the court to release the boy to his care. Upon seeing him in full light, Brownlow sees something vaguely familiar in his image. With a caring nature, Brownlow and his courageous friend, Rose (a role for Emma Bowman greatly contrasting that of her Mrs. Sowerberry), are the story's unlikely heroes in a time period when such actions and attitudes in Victorian England toward a street urchin like Oliver brand Dickens' story a true work of fiction.

Throughout the tale, the boy of our most interest is usually quiet, allowing those around him to tell his tale. Ofer Kranz's Oliver Twist is the epitome of innocence who seems to have at least dim hope for a better future but who also seems to fear that any sign of better is probably only temporary.

Collapsing such a complex story told in hundreds of pages while using words from those pages is quite a formidable task. Bartlett's script, under the direction of Foothill College Professor Francine Torres, succeeds to some extent, but the necessarily short glimpses we get of scenes and key characters sometimes leaves us wanting more time to observe and to understand better the motivations and nuances. Also, the inclusion of occasional sung or chanted narratives by groups of the quickly assembled cast are (at least for me) a bit jarring, disruptive, and sometimes difficult to understand.

The excellent Victorian accents that range from the polished affluence of Mr. Brownlow and Rose to the cockney, consonant-dropping slang and speech of Fagin and his gang to the pompous, inflated floods of words coming from middle-class people like Mr. Bumble, are easy to understand. Kudos to dialect coach Tom Gough.

Ron Gasparinetti once again proves his scenic design prowess by creating a set that portrays grim, dank, and dirty conditions of an orphanage or Fagin hideout that quickly transform to Brownlow's upper-class parlor. Ed Hunter's lighting cues take us through dingy streets, shadowy paths, and dimly lit confines. Alvina Xu brings to full life the wide range of society, from the lowest to the highest, through a vast array of costumes.

Overall, Neil Bartlett's staged adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist is a noble recreation of the classic that in the hands of Foothill Music Theatre is an enjoyable romp through Victorian England in a grim tale we know from the beginning will have a happy ending for one little boy with bushy hair and a kind spirit.

Oliver Twist runs through June 7, 2026, at Foothill Music Theatre, Lohman Theatre, 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills CA. For tickets and information, please visit foothill.edu/theatre/music-theatre.html.