‘Oliver!’: Fast Food Instead of a Feast

What show is it? It opens with a bunch of singing, smudged-cheeked orphans in a workhouse who have a rough life. It stars Andrea McArdle. No, it’s not “Annie”; it’s “Oliver!” and it’s playing at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

McArdle is a young lady now, and she plays Nancy, the martyred protectress of young Oliver in the musical Lionel Bart fashioned from “Oliver Twist,” the mother of all orphan stories.

With such feisty songs as “Consider Yourself” and “It’s a Fine Life,” “Oliver!” is, musically speaking, a rich show, if not a work of the very first rank. Produced by the Theater League and directed by Jon Engstrom, this is a by-the-numbers “Oliver!,” sung and acted as if to a metronome, so that each line has the same resonance as every other one.

Engstrom has not had either the time or the inclination to shape the show, which conveys a let’s-get-it-over-with quality. Even the climactic murder of a beloved main character is not particularly roped off in any emotional sense.

But first, the good news. Richard Kline is an entertaining Fagin, the ragged, greedy ringleader of a band of lost London boys. Rubbing his finger-less gloves, he teaches his charges to earn their keep by pickpocketing.

Kline is animated and visually arresting, always leaning forward, with his oily gray hair and long coat trailing behind him. He looks like he’s tilting toward a wind machine. Kline is the only actor who seems totally relaxed in his role, who lets loose and enjoys himself. He makes a layered soliloquy out of “Reviewing the Situation,” Fagin’s doomed flirtation with changing his evil ways. His left eyebrow zooms upward every time he considers settling down, and he realizes that some people are just not cut out to be respectable.

With her brave chin jutting outward, McArdle brings that bright, strong voice of hers to the ballad “As Long as He Needs Me,” and she makes the song’s key change thrilling.

She appears to be miscast, though. Nancy is usually an earthy, sexy type, with a throaty voice. McArdle is clean-cut, shiny-haired and scrubbed. She looks like she should be playing Irene Molloy in “Hello, Dolly!” or a college student in “Good News.” It’s nearly impossible to imagine her being constantly debased by her lover, the evil Bill Sykes (an adequately sinister Mark Edgar Stephens).

As Mr. Bumble, Calvin Remsberg repeats almost exactly the rotund Beadle he played in the national tour of “Sweeney Todd,” and he has corrupt unctuousness down perfectly.

As Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker who briefly employs Oliver, Hap Lawrence looks a perfect sharp-nosed Dickensian villain, and Laura Gardner as his wife is originally mean.

As a pint-sized Oliver with precise bowl-cut hair, Christopher Winsor sings “Where Is Love?” with restrained loveliness, and he remains at least relatively unaffected in the cuteness department.

A program reader may notice that no one is credited with set design. The set is basic but workable: Several towers of wooden slats pivot on a turntable to suggest benches, bridges and bunks. (There is a crude sign reading “God Is Love” in the workhouse, a nice touch.)

The real mystery is not who designed the set, but why the choreographer chose to be revealed. He is none other than the director, which perhaps explains why Engstrom didn’t have time to shade the drama. The dances and the movements are pure summer stock, starting disastrously with the opening number, “Food, Glorious Food,” in which the ragamuffins lift their little arms up and down in mechanical, simple synchronization, over and over again.

The chorus numbers look prepackaged, shrink-wrapped and just plain cheesy. Often they don’t make sense. Why is the woman bystander from whom the lads have just stolen fruit singing the welcoming “Consider Yourself” to Oliver, who is clearly being given a lesson in stealing?

“Oliver!” can be an affecting love story between a battered woman and a buffeted little boy. But at Thousand Oaks, it’s simply another Broadway musical off the musical mill, remarkably unpunctuated, cobbled together for unexamined consumption.

* “Oliver!,” Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, Probst Center, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Tuesday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $29.50 to $37.50; $10 ages 5 to 16, Saturday matinee and Sunday evening only. (805) 583-8700, (213) 480-3232, (714) 740-2000. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

“Oliver!,”

Christopher Winsor: Oliver Twist

Calvin Remsberg: Mr. Bumble

Carol Kline: Widow Corney, Mrs. Bedwin

Hap Lawrence: Mr. Sowerberry, Mr. Grimwig

Laura Gardner: Mrs. Sowerberry

Cody Christopher: The Artful Dodger

Richard Kline: Fagin

Andrea McArdle: Nancy

Mark Edgar Stephens: Bill Sykes

Paul Kent: Mr. Brownlow

With: Adam Grey, Amy Prothro, Matt Schultz, Merry Simkins, Alexis Kalehoff, Spencer Liff, James Blashaw, Andrew Martin, Kathryn Skatula, Rick Conant, Randy Hills, Tracy Powell, Matt Kubicek, Leanna Polk

M. Edelman presents a Theater League Production. Book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. Based on Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.” Directed and choreographed by Jon Engstrom. Assistant choreographer Rick Conant. Musical director Lloyd Cooper. Wardrobe coordinator Renee Van Niel. Lights Jonathan Wyman. Sound Mark Cowburn. Production stage manager B.J. Allen.