Olivier! review I Rowan Atkinson on playing Fagin

After Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! opened in the the West End in 1960 it had 2,618 performances over six years, employed 11 Olivers and ten Artful Dodgers and became the longest-running musical in London’s history. Now the hope is that Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular £4.5 million revival will inject much needed confidence into a nervous West End.

The show is already the fastest selling on record, with £15 million in advance ticket sales banked before it opened last night at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, £3 million more than Dirty Dancing managed in 2006.

Partly this is because, after a dogged 15-year pursuit, Sir Cameron finally persuaded Rowan Atkinson to take the part of Fagin for his first appearance on a commercial stage in 20 years, although he played the role in his son’s school production three years ago.

Times Archive, 1960: Oliver! at the New Theatre

Lionel Bart's musical version of Oliver Twist is presented with gusto but perhaps inevitably is something of a hotch-potch

• Oliver Twist as a musical: Work of Mr Lionel Bart

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The source material is copper-bottomed, too: Dickens’s Oliver Twist has been adapted for cinema, television and the stage countless times, beginning with the author’s own vigorous public readings from it.

In charge is Rupert Goold, the most sought-after young director in the country who won the 2008 Olivier Award for Best Director for Macbeth.

Interest in Oliver! has been building ever since the BBC One talent show I’d Do Anything last year, in which a jury including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Denise Van Outen and Barry Humphries chose three Olivers and a public vote picked Jodie Prenger, a former cruise ship entertainer from Blackpool, to play the doomed prostitute, Nancy.

Richard Pulford, chief executive of the Society of London Theatre, said that the advance sales for Oliver! were likely to have a knock-on effect for the prosperity of theatre in the West End. “They have been selling tickets for a long time, well into next year, for a show that has not yet opened,” he said. “To have a hugely successful show in the West End is good for the West End as a whole.”

Overall, revenues in the West End held up well last year, although they fell short of the record-breaking 2007 take. Theatre people are casting wary glances across the Atlantic, where the economic crisis is already biting hard on Broadway.

In London, last year will be remembered as one of notable flops. New hit musicals, which accounted for about two thirds of ticket sales in 2007, have been almost nonexistent. Only Zorro, with music by the Gipsy Kings, has bucked the trend.

However, as Oliver! shows, producers are still trying their luck. Spring ushers in two more large musicals, both based on hit films: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Sister Act.

Mr Pulford is optimistic. “History suggests that theatre is one of the last to feel a downturn and one of the first to recover,” he said.

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