Re: Oliver!--personal footnotes

[music <music...>]

The discussion, and esp. Eve's reflections (and Ethan's footnote) on
OLIVER! have been, indeed, glorious food for thought.  I'm intrigued by
Eve's and others' Jewish spin on the musical's Fagin character, and it
absolutely resonates with me.

I have neither cold jelly nor custard to add to this discussion (let alone,
certainly, hot sausage and mustard), but feel impelled to add two personal
associations:

1) I saw the original Broadway musical, from orchestra seats (only cause my
uncle took me!), and remember it vividly.  Seeing and hearing "Who Will
Buy?" on stage--and it was almost as much seeing as hearing--made for a
snapshot that feels as if it were taken a week ago.  (That song, by the
way, was most certainly adapted from English street cries, as per one
poster's note; I'm not sure about others.)

The original Fagin was played by Clive Revill (who--oddly?--was from New
Zealand, more or less the same neck of the woods as Australia, though not a
Staten Island Ferry ride away, as I used to think).  He's a versatile
actor, who plays an Irish arms smuggler to perfection in the last of the
original (NBC) Columbos.

2) By a truly weird coincidence (insert Twilight Zone theme if you wish), I
was singing "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" to myself half an hour
before I logged on--first time since Friday--and found this raft
of "Oliver!" messages.  Strange ... I *always* sing it with heavy
Yiddischer inflection--and I think I was implicitly aware of the more
benign Fagin that Lionel Bart's lyrics (and Revill's delivery of them)
conveyed; I grew up on Dickens' novels, including OLIVER TWIST, and saw the
David Lean movie as a child.  But it's enlightening to hear this made
explicit through Eve's rich observations--for which many thanks!

--Robert Cohen, reviewing the situation in Boston, Mass.


---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+