Twist and shout for more!

Oliver! (Grange Park Opera) Verdict: Oom-pah-pah!

Last year Hampshire’s eccentric opera house gave us Fiddler On the Roof with Bryn terfel as tevye.

this year, they opened the season with Lionel Bart’s enduring twist on Dickens, this time with the distinguished operatic baritone simon Keenlyside as an unusually amiable Fagin.

From the moment the curtain rises on the workhouse orphans dreaming of Food, Glorious Food, the stage is set for some barnstorming youthful exuberance.

and when they are joined by Fagin’s urchin gang and zip into a brilliantly choreographed Consider Yourself, you know that these splendidly drilled kids are going to steal the show.

they’re led by an impish and impudent artful Dodger from young Charlie Barnard, while 12-year-old Wesley Kent-Hargreaves is a toothily winsome Oliver, bringing the necessary lump to the throat in Where Is Love?

But Dickens’s great gallery of characters and Bart’s wonderful tunes are strongly served by the adults, too.

Keenlyside’s gently understated Fagin genially resists Jewish caricature and he is also sensitive enough to ensure that his silky voice doesn’t sound jarringly operatic in a mainly music-theatre cast (the show is discreetly amplified).

Fine singing, too, from Jodie Jacobs as a sympathetic Nancy, ebulliently crowd-pleasing for Oom-Pah-Pah and genuinely moving in as Long as He Needs Me.

Director Jean-Pierre van der spuy and designer Richard Kent provide a slick, evocative and joyful tour of Dickensian London and a stylish showband packs plenty of orchestral punch under conductor adam Rowe.

the company plans to move to a £10million new opera house in bosky surrey in June next year and I have no doubt that patrons will be asking for more of this terrific show.

OLIVER! plays in repertoire until July 2. The Grange Park Opera season runs until July 16.