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.