This darker take on the classic musicalis all killer, no filler

Consider yourself consummately entertained if you get a ticket for this xceptional revival of Lionel Bart's show.

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Distilled from Dickens and filtered through a mid-20th century sense of the capital's shifting social tides and undercurrents, it's the quintessential London musical.

The score of Oliver! is all killer, no filler, from Food Glorious Food to Consider Yourself and I'd Do Anything. It's boggling to think that the witty book, wildly diverse music and earworm lyrics all came from Bart, the son of working-class Galician Jewish refugees, still in his twenties when he wrote it.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh has mounted blockbuster stagings in the past. Here, with director/choreographer Matthew Bourne, he's created a more intimate version that evokes the spirit of the 1960 premiere but also treats the story's trickier aspects with finesse and delicacy.