Pen­ny Ash­ton presents a new musi­cal inspired by the writ­ings of Charles Dick­ens as part of Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val 2017.

Olive, a beau­ti­ful vir­tu­ous orphan, teach­es the younger orphans at Mrs Sour­tart’s squalid orphan­age in exchange for a place to live. Her suit­or, Edward Good­sort, was reclaimed from the same estab­lish­ment by his mon­eyed fam­i­ly and now lives a life of lux­u­ry. Yet he can’t for­get Olive and wish­es to res­cue her. Although Olive loves him, she won’t let him alien­ate his new found fam­i­ly. After an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent, Olive must leave every­thing she knows to ven­ture out into the world. With Edward not the only man to look for her, will our intre­pid Olive find a hap­py end­ing? Or will she be left cold and alone in pox-rid­den Lon­don to die a gin-fueled death?

Ash­ton gives a vir­tu­oso per­for­mance as mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters. Rather than cos­tume changes she relies on slight phys­i­cal and accent changes to out­line each char­ac­ter. She’s not afraid of five dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters with­in one song, each fol­low­ing the oth­er in rapid suc­ces­sion. Occa­sion­al­ly this is con­fus­ing but most­ly it is a lot of fun. The script is filled with puns, point­ed obser­va­tions, and innu­en­do. With beau­ti­ful cos­tum­ing by Eliz­a­beth Whit­ing and musi­cal sup­port composed/arranged by Rob­bie Ellis this is a well designed pro­duc­tion.

A suit­ably twisty sto­ry with an hon­ourable hero, moral­ly bank­rupt vil­lains, out­ra­geous names, and songs with famil­iar melodies add up to an enter­tain­ing night out. Jol­ly good fun.