ARTicles vol. 5 i.3b: Bartlett’s Creation

In anticipation of the American premiere of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, ARTicles interviewed Neil Bartlett, the creator and director of the piece. Mr. Bartlett has had a long, distinguished career as actor, director, adaptor and novelist. This will be his second production at the American Repertory Theater. Katie Rasor: What appeals to you about Oliver Twist? Neil Bartlett: I defy anyone to show me a boring page written by Charles Dickens. His works get inside your head, and you never forget them. Two things make him absolute gold onstage: First, the story. Second the way he handles words. He writes some of the most inventive, astonishing, strange, alive sentences in English. At times they’re simple. What is it about, “Please, Sir, I want some more.” that makes it one of the most famous lines in English literature? So Oliver Twist is a story I’ve been promising myself I would stage for a long time. KR: What challenges did you face adapting this piece? NB: You have to honor the original, but you also have to reinvent it. Oliver Twist is a story lots of people love. You’ve got two jobs: You’ve got to satisfy people so they feel we have done justice to the original, but you’ve also got to make it your own. And you’ve got to push people’s expectations. It mustn’t be comfortable. You shouldn’t be watching and thinking “Ah, this is lovely.” It shouldn’t be reassuring and familiar. Dickens’ work is frightening and exciting. I hope to bring this side to life. KR: Could you tell us about the set design? NB: Oliver Twist is a thriller that moves at an incredible pace. So the design has to move quickly. Dickens goes from one place to another by just turning the page. We needed to go with a design that would never stop providing all the different locations: the orphanage, London Bridge at midnight, the den where Fagin lives. Rae Smith has constructed something that is half way between a set and a machine. It’s a giant box of tricks. KR: How did you and Rae Smith come up with the concept? NB: It was inspired by a visit to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. They have a collection of what used to be called “Penny Dreadful Machines.” They are little, mechanical glass-fronted boxes, and inside the box there is a room in a castle or house. You drop a penny in the slot, which activates a clockwork mechanism, and little figures pop up and act out a story. Rae has taken one of those children’s toys and blown it up into a giant box for the theater. The storytelling has as much to do with the design as the words. KR: I understand that Victorian Music halls influenced you. How? NB: One of Dickens’ characteristic tricks is moving along at a clip and then suddenly pulling back and delivering some great moralizing paragraph. He was famous as an orator about social injustice, and one of the problems with turning a novel into a play is that you keep the dialogue but lose Dickens talking to his readers. So we’ve taken those passages of prose and set them to tunes from the Music Hall of the period. Choruses sing the Dickens and punctuate the action. The song share Dickens’ comments on what he felt about the events of the story. It’s not a musical, but it has sung choruses. It’s very different from the Lionel Bart musical. KR: What are other ways that you tried to preserve the essence of the novel? NB: All the words in the production are by Dickens. The show is called Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. It really is his. The original language is so fantastic, why would you use anything else? KR:What made you choose the Artful Dodger as a narrator? NB: Since he’s such a cheeky little sod, he can get very close to the audience. KR: Does the novel have any contemporary resonance? NB: Why is a novel written 160 years ago still in print? Because the question in the middle of the story is: Have we made a world in which children are safe? And everyone knows the answer to that question. The story is still true. Katie Rasor is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.