Oliver! Oliver! Never before has a boy meant more!

Right at the beginning: And things just get better!

My buddy Ron and I having a serious conversation. He let me in on a secret that had to do with ...well..I aint tellin!

Russ Abbot, who plays Fagin now may be nasty on stage but he's an actual sweetheart! Very nice, very chatty!

Kate and her glamorous sausages and mash! Yes! in a Martini glass!

Mark Lester (The cute boy called Oliver all those years ago) et moi

Ron Moody addressing the cast and the Audience at the end of the show and celebrating 50 years of Oliver!
Can you tell I'm not excited at all?!

Me toootallyyy blending in at the after party heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Okay, this is one of those things that just happens and is PERFECT! Had I worked months on trying to arrange this it couldn't have happened like that! Carolyn Bodley you have no idea ho happy you made this girl right here!

It just so happened that a colleague had tickets to Oliver! And it just so happened they were on offer and it just so happened that I got in at the right time and claimed them and it just so happened that they weren't any tickets but OLIVER! 50th ANNIVERSARY tickets (with drinks after and all)! and it just so happened that the lovely Kate was available that evening.

So it just so happened I was at one of my favourite musicals on earth with the best company! So yes special , special and more special! The seats were great! I could almost touch those miserable workhouse kids as they came out from everywhere possible singing 'food glorious food'

I wont review the play. You can find this in many many other places. But I will tell you how it made me feel. To call it a feast for the senses is, well for lack of anything else that comes to mind, is the only way I could describe it at the moment.

At points in the play I was so overwhelmed by all the performances on stage I hardly knew where to look and what to look at. The 'Consider yourself at home' and 'Who will buy' segments come to mind quite strongly. But equally Fagin and boys' performances when Oliver first arrives!

Russ Abbot's Fagin is brilliant. Very true to Fagin but with a Russ Abbot take that I thoroughly enjoyed. Kerry Ellis was a wonderful Nancy and Steven Hartley a very convincing evil Bill Sikes. Both Gwion Wyn Jones as Oliver and Ben Wilson as The Artful Dodger owned the stage and were equally adorable!

All of this aside and more than how spectacular everything about Oliver! is, it's the way it made me feel! How it took me back to the first time I laid my hands on the book a good 19 years ago in school and read and studied Oliver for the first time. It was a grim story painted quite morbidly by our teacher who was trying to be true to the times.

So it was quite a surprise when right about the same time I saw the film and was greeted by one of the best musicals I've seen. With every song , every scene of the play I went back to our room in our old house in Alex where I saw Oliver for the first time.

And being the desperate reminiscing fool that I am of course I shed a tear or two (or a lot!). But nothing could've prepared me or anyone in the audience for Ron Moody aka THE FAGIN appearing on stage at the end of the play to celebrate 50 years of Oliver!

And nothing could've prepared me for meeting him, the original Oliver (Mark Lester) and the current Fagin after the show and having a lovely chat about how much this all meant to me! Not a bad night out I say!