by Rose Rushe
STAGING two full productions this year, Cecilian Musical Society will open with Oliver! at Lime Tree Theatre on Wednesday April 29, running to May bank holiday Saturday 2.
Work began in late 2014 on this project. Rolling foward some months, an estimated 130 children showed up for auditions past as orphans, urchins and of course, the two leads, young Oliver and the Artful Dodger. Ultimately, Eoin Cantillon Mann is cast as the vulnerable hero and Adam Stapleton steals hearts and pockets as Dodger.
Arts page tapped into Fagin (Brian Henry) who “did the role four years ago with Ennis Musical Society and it’s one I really enjoyed,” he chuckles. There will be no short cuts either in this massive undertaking for which work began in December. “Cecilians will be doing all the numbers that everyone knows and it’s the full show by Lionel Bart. We have a 10-piece orchestra in the pit led by Shane Farrell and [director] Des Henn and [choreographer] Barbara Meaney are putting us through our paces”.
A big set is built to recreate Dickensian London, no easy task and Oliver himself, Eoin, is reprising a role he first did last year with Crescent College Comprehensive.
On the tone of the Cecilians’ production, Brian makes the point that “people think of Oliver! as a bright, happy show but it is dark.. and we are going with that slant”.
Bear in mind that Fagin is central to child slavery, hazard, abandoned children apprenticed to gangs. Dickens gave us London and Victorian life as no one else had or has in a most entertaining form; Cecilian Musical Society gives us Oliver! April 29-May 2.
Book on www.limetreetheatre.ie for 8pm.
