Want some more? Take A Bow to take on 'Oliver!'
Kids head to the workhouses. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Owen Lennox, as the Artful Dodger, and Liam Sousa, as Oliver rehearse a dance number.
Owen Lennox rehearses a song as the Artful Dodger.
Giuliana Gioni and Samuel Baldwin tug on Liam Sousa's arms in one of the show's first scenes.
Eddie Casey strolls in as Bill Sikes with Kayleigh Solomon.
Julian Lazaro practices one of his songs as Fagan.
The kids practice a group dance.
Pickpocketers go in for a cheer.
Kids head to the workhouses. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Owen Lennox, as the Artful Dodger, and Liam Sousa, as Oliver rehearse a dance number.
Owen Lennox rehearses a song as the Artful Dodger.
Giuliana Gioni and Samuel Baldwin tug on Liam Sousa's arms in one of the show's first scenes.
Eddie Casey strolls in as Bill Sikes with Kayleigh Solomon.
Julian Lazaro practices one of his songs as Fagan.
The kids practice a group dance.
Pickpocketers go in for a cheer.
With heads bowed and arms outstretched, kids marched through the hall of the Smith Mills Christian Congregational Church in preparation for the workhouses they will soon find themselves in.
But the labor that these children will be undertaking is not in the workhouses mines or factories of Olde Victorian England but rather on the stage in Take A Bow’s upcoming production of “Oliver, Jr.”
“Oliver, Jr.” is an abridged version of the 1968 musical “Oliver!” set in Victorian England and follows the story of an orphan boy who finds himself mixed up with pickpocketers when he runs away to London.
“[The show] is from what a lot of people call the golden age of musicals,” said Eddie Casey, 12, who plays Bill Sikes. “It’s a very old show. It has classical-ish music. It’s from a great era of music.”
Giuliana Gioni, 14, noted that Take A Bow — a youth theater group for kids in second through eighth grade — normally puts on shows that are based on Disney movies, such as “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” and “The Lion King, Jr.”
“Since not everyone’s super familiar with this show … I feel like it’s really different for some people, and it’s really good, and I feel like that’s going to catch people’s eye to want to come,” said Gioni, who plays Widow Corney.
Liam Sousa, 10, plays Oliver and agreed that the show is “very different” from the others Take A Bow has put on during his time with the group.
When it came to auditioning for the show, he said it was a “little challenging” because he hadn’t been very familiar with the movie.
“You don’t really know who you want to try out for. Then, once you watch the movie, it is a very great movie,” Sousa said.
Since the end of January, the actors have been preparing for the show, not only learning their lines and song lyrics, but also how to speak with a Cockney accent.
“We’re really getting it,” said 12-year-old Owen Lennox, who plays the Artful Dodger. “Originally this was a really hard play to learn with all the actions and all that.”
Emily Gherard, 12, said getting into her character Nancy was somewhat easy because she’s “very protective of people.”
“The British accent was the only thing I had to actually work on,” she said.
Samuel Baldwin, who plays Mr. Bumble, said one of the most challenging parts of rehearsals has been learning the songs.
“I think individual people are pretty good, but when you put them all together, I feel like it’s really hard to have everybody do their best at the same time,” he said.
Sousa said that there are also several big dance numbers that can be confusing,
“I think the five main core cast are all doing a really good job of learning lines and making bonds with the characters,” said 14-year-old Julian Lazaro, who plays a character named Fagin.
He added, “I think that they definitely got the cast right, and I think it’s going to be a really good play.”
See "Oliver! Jr." at the Westport Middle-High School, located at 400 Old County Road, Westport. Show times are Friday, April 10 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, April 11 at 2 p.m. or 7 p.m. Click here to purchase tickets.
