Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 24. Chapters: Oliver!, Bye Bye Birdie, The Fantasticks, Camelot, Ernest in Love, Do Re Mi, Wildcat, Irma La Douce, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Tenderloin, Camelot songs, Greenwillow, Follow That Girl, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, From A to Z. Excerpt: Oliver! is a British musical, with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It premiered in the West End in 1960, enjoying a long run, a successful Broadway production in 1963 and further tours and revivals. It was made into a musical film in 1968. A London revival played from 1994-1996 and anoth from December 2008 to January 2011. Oliver! was the first musical adaptation of a famous Charles Dickens work to become a stage hit. (Besides the fame of Oliver Twist, another reason for the success of the musical was the revolving stage set, designed by Sean Kenny.) There had been two previous Dickens musicals in the 1950s, both of them television adaptations of A Christmas Carol. The show launched the careers of several child actors, including Davy Jones, later of The Monkees; Phil Collins, later of Genesis; Alan Paul, later of The Manhattan Transfer; and Tony Robinson, who later played the role of Baldrick in the television series Blackadder. The singer Steve Marriott (Small Faces, Humble Pie) also featured in early line-ups, eventually graduating to the role of Artful Dodger in the West End production. The plot of Dickens' original novel is considerably simplified for the purposes of the musical, with Fagin being represented more as a comic character than as a villain, and large portions of the latter part of the story being completely left out. (It may well be that Bart based his musical on David Lean's film, rather than Dickens' book). Although Dickens' novel has been called antisemitic in its portrayal of the Jew Fagin...