Robert Tanitch reviews two books
OLIVER! A Dickensian musical by Marc Napolitano (Oxford University Press, £22.99). Charles Dickens’s novels were so popular that they were staged instantly – sometimes even before Dickens had finished writing them. There was no copyright in those days. Oliver was played a girl. Even more surprising was that The Police Magistrate was played by Ira Aldridge, the great black actor – which means Victorian theatre audiences were colour-blind about casting long before we were! Oliver Twist has been staged, filmed and televised endlessly. David Lean’s film remains the definitive film. Lionel Bart’s Oliver! remains the definitive musical. It will continue to be staged in the years to come. Fagin, a great role, has been transformed. Bart’s Fagin (much nicer, more comic) is not Dickens’s Fagin. Napolitano is academic but his book is accessible to the non-academic reader
LOCAL GLORIES by Ann Satterthwaite (Oxford University Press (£22.99). Opera Houses on Main Street. Where Art and Community Meet. Ann Satterthwaite is a city planner and is primarily involved in environmental, cultural and preservation planning. Her academic study traces the rise of opera houses and their decline with the arrival of the movies and then their rebirth. Opera houses were a symbol of civic pride in the 19th century. (Iowa alone had 1,200 opera houses.) The need for entertainment overrode rigid attitudes that plays and theatre people were immoral. Until the 1850s Shakespeare was part of everybody’s culture. Thereafter multicultural audiences wanted melodrama:Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ben Hur and Rip Van Winkle (starring Joseph Jefferson) were always popular. But Sarah Bernhardt (in French), Charles Dickens (dramatic readings), Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde (lecturing) toured and could be relied on to draw audiences in large numbers
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