IT HAS now been confirmed that Cameron Mackintosh’s West End revival of Lionel Bart’s musical, Oliver! will open on January 14th, 2009 (previews from December 12th, 2008) at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with Rowan Atkinson in the role of Fagin. The new production, based on Sam Mendes’ 1994 staging at the London Palladium, will be directed by Rupert Goold, Artistic Director of Headlong Theatre, who recently won the Olivier, Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Best Director for his Patrick Stewart-led Macbeth which is currently playing on Broadway. Oliver! will mark his musical debut. Joining Goold will be two members of Mendes’ original creative team – Matthew Bourne, who will co-direct and choreograph; and set designer Anthony Ward. Between December 1994 and February 1998, the Mendes’ production clocked up 1,366 performances and grossed more than £40 million at the box office. Based on Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist, Oliver! is the story of a young orphan boy who runs away from an orphanage and becomes involved with a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by an elderly mentor, the incorrigible Fagin. It includes the songs Food Glorious Food, Consider Yourself, You’ve Got To Pick-A-Pocket Or Two, As Long as He Needs Me, I’d do Anything and, of course, the title song.

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