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[0:01] Max Miller: I think that Oliver is, yes, it's a golden age musical, but it pushes into that Les Miserables world, where you can have all of these flawed characters and still be rooting for them all the way through this long journey. It's, yeah.

[0:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome everybody to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today we are discussing the musical Oliver! which was a listener request from both Mark and Ian. Mark wrote to us and said, quote, I would love to hear a podcast on the musical Oliver. It was the first musical I performed at 10 years old and was obsessed with that show. It's still a favorite of mine. If you can make that happen, it would make my day, unquote. Well, Mark, consider your day made. And then Ian wrote, my daily full-time life is that of a parent of two and running a commercial real estate investment business.

However, I get great joy out of musical theater, acting and singing almost more than anything at this point in my 40-year-old life, other than the joy for my children. This is something that has been planted within me when I performed in a community theater production of Oliver with my son just a few years ago. It changed me forever and I am thankful for the impact it has had on me and consequently on my children. Are you kidding me? That's the cutest freaking thing. Gives me the chills. Thank you. Thank you for writing in. I'm so grateful you both requested Oliver and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Here as my special guest is another big fan of Oliver. He is a gifted performer, an author and a YouTube star. His channel Tasting History has 1.34 million subscribers. I checked that this morning, by the way. Crazy. Incredible. Everyone, please welcome Max Miller.

[2:14] Max Miller: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, especially to talk about one of my favorite shows ever.

[2:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. It really is one of your favorite shows ever?

[2:21] Max Miller: It is one of my favorite shows ever. Yeah.

[2:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. Haven't seen Oliver on stage.

[2:26] Max Miller: Oh, well, you know what? Isn't that crazy? That might be a good thing because it is often not done well.

[2:35] Max Miller: It's one of those shows, you know, there are a lot of shows like Grease and, you know, just a lot of those shows which are not done well.

[2:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it can be very, very slow moving if it's not directed well.

[2:45] Max Miller: I get you. I get you. Right off the bat, tell us about Tasting History because it's obviously going to come up with the show that has an opening number entitled Glorious Food, right?

[2:57] Max Miller: So, Tasting History is my YouTube channel, and each episode I find an old recipe from history. That could be the 1920s, 1930s, Titanic, Victorian England, going all the way back to ancient Rome and ancient Babylon 4,000 years ago. And then I make the recipe in my kitchen, doing the best I possibly can. And then I talk about the history of sometimes that dish or an ingredient in that dish or something to do with the people who ate it, the culture, the, you know, a story that ties into it. What I love about musical theater is that it becomes a window into understanding culture and people. And I think what you've proven is food can absolutely be that as well.

[3:40] Max Miller: Yep, absolutely. I would love to say that I come from a long line of delicious cuisines. But, like, the truth of the matter is my people were farmers. They've always been farmers. And so, like, boiled carrots and potatoes are really as interesting as it gets.

[4:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, but you know what? That's delicious. You know, you look at a lot of historic food and it's like, well, this is very boring. It's boiled meat and beans or whatever. But it's delicious. So who cares if it's boring? Now we'll talk about boring food, I'm sure, like gruel. But before that, talk to me about your history with Oliver.

[4:24] Max Miller: So as one of your viewers at least mentioned, I was introduced to Oliver very young. It's one of my first musicals that I ever sang in. And it was more of a review of Oliver, actually. I was nine.

[4:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's young, by the way.

[4:41] Max Miller: Yeah, so we did all of the songs from Oliver, but not the book. You know, it was really just the songs. And I was Oliver. And it was my first solo in front of people that I remember. I may have done this, but that was it. Gosh, I may have even been eight, but I think I probably just turned nine.

[5:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so sweet. That same year, my mom was a high school teacher. And that same year, her high school was doing the show. And, you know, I thought that that was just the most amazing thing. And now looking back on it, it was probably your standard high school production. But to a nine-year-old, it was Broadway. I mean, it was phenomenal. And ever since, I've really enjoyed it. When I got older, because I kind of didn't listen to it for a long time, you know. But then when I got older and I started listening to cast albums, I bought the 1994 London cast album that has Jonathan Pryce as Fagin. And it, to this day, I think is...

[5:43] Max Miller: Cameron Macintosh.

[5:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, Cameron Macintosh.

[5:45] Max Miller: I think it's the best version of the show, at least that's on a recording. Every performance is phenomenal. And it was like I was reintroduced to this music, but through the ears of someone who had been now performing for years and really knew a lot more about music and everything. And it held up. And I just love the score. And that actually inspired me to go read the novel. It was the first Dickens novel I ever read. I was in ninth grade. I still remember I read it on a family trip to Flagstaff. And now it's ingrained in my brain, because while I was reading it, we heard that Princess Diana had died.

[6:31] Max Miller: Oh, my gosh. And so now whenever I think of Oliver, I think of Princess Diana and vice versa. So it just has this weird, like, thing in my head. And it actually inspired my love of Charles Dickens, who is now one of my favorite authors. So Oliver led me down a lot of paths that very few shows have, I guess.

[6:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm so impressed by you. It really does make me feel like just an uneducated little twit. Because, like, I haven't read a Charles Dickens novel.

[7:04] Max Miller: I haven't.

[7:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's what my musicals are for.

[7:08] Max Miller: Exactly. That's amazing, though. I love that. I love that. Oliver is such an interesting piece to me, because it is an outlier in many ways. It was a hit that completely embraced and understood the golden age Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe musical form, but it didn't come from America. And you had experimental stuff in the 1960s, like Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, other Anthony Newley-type musicals from the U.K. By the way, Stop the World was the same Broadway season as Oliver.

[7:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow.

[7:48] Max Miller: But it was a little bit more minimal, a little bit more experimental. This was a full-fledged musical. And then, of course, once the 80s come along and the art form starts shifting, with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron McIntosh doing, you know, Cats and Phantom of the Opera, all of the musicals that we now look at as the British Invasion, then things completely change. But for a while, Oliver was the British-American musical.

[8:16] Max Miller: Yeah. It was also an outlier in a couple of other ways that I want to discuss here right at the top. Number one, it was the first successful musical adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel. So let's start with him. Charles Dickens, what do you love about him? You just said he's your favorite author, and I'm curious, because those are long books.

[8:34] Max Miller: They are long books. He was pretty much paid by the word. And the way that he published was serial. So he didn't publish the book. A little bit published at a time. It was a few chapters each month, yeah. So, you know, you have to think of it more like a soap opera. And that's why I love him, because they are like a soap opera. The stories are outrageous. They are detailed. The characters, just their names, you know, their names are fantastic. Today in literature and movies, a lot of our tropes are taken from Charles Dickens and his character development. What seems to us to be very stereotypical was brand new when Charles Dickens created it. And that's, I just, his whole world building is fantastic.

He is, to me, he's one of the first, even though he's not a fantasy writer in any way, he is one of the first kind of fantasy world builders. He can put you in London in, you know, 1835, or Paris in the 1790s, far better than most authors of that period were doing. And partly it was because he had so many words to do it in and took his time. And he'll spend literally a page talking about what the knock on a door sounded like. And he just paints with those words. And sometimes it's a little tedious, but if you love the language and you just kind of get over that, you can immerse yourself in him.

[10:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He was also, from what I understand, a social critic.

[10:17] Max Miller: Oh, yes.

[10:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I can't help but feel that so much of that comes from his childhood. Dickens left school around the age of 12 to work in a factory because his father was incarcerated in like a debtor's prison where he had all of this debt. And so then you get sent to a prison to work off your debt. And the hard part about often being in debtor's prison was you actually couldn't work to pay off your debt. You had to have family and friends who were willing to work on the outside to pay off your debt and get you out. So you're just in a prison.

[10:56] Max Miller: Yeah.

[10:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That is a rigged system, if I've ever heard one. And so isn't it insane that one of our greatest literary fiction writers of all time, kind of uneducated.

[11:10] Max Miller: Yeah.

[11:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's huge. He was definitely an autodidact. He taught himself everything. And you mentioned that he was published serially. And in 1836, The Pickwick Papers becomes this huge phenomenon, and that was his first big success. And what I didn't realize is that Oliver Twist, which is what Oliver is based on, was number two. Like it's right at the beginning of his career. One of his first books. There's actually a wonderful musical based on The Pickwick Papers, too.

[11:39] Max Miller: Yes, Pickwick.

[11:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Does it have an exclamation point, too?

[11:44] Max Miller: I sure hope so.

[11:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think it does, actually. I think the musical does. The title of the book is The Complete Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Society. That was too long for the marquee, so they just changed it to Pickwick.

[11:54] Max Miller: I love it.

[11:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love it. It's interesting that in musical theater, we can say the names are too long, so we just have to shorten and add an exclamation point. And yet at the same time as Oliver came out, we had A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Stopped the World I Want to Get Off. So we are not consistent. But I love the energy and enthusiasm. So Oliver comes out, huge success for him. And what do you feel is the social commentary that he's getting at with Oliver?

[12:24] Max Miller: There are lots of things, but like many of his books, it shows the lower classes of London, the struggling classes, in conflict with the upper class. There were other stories that dealt with the lower classes, but he always brings those two worlds together and shows the clash and shows how one treats the other. And often what's interesting is he doesn't make it clear that one is good and one is bad. The people might be very good and bad, but the actual society usually isn't. There are good and bad in each group. And that's one reason why his stuff is so interesting is that except for very few characters in his writings, they are all flawed. I mean, you've got someone like Nancy, who, you know, she's a prostitute and has battered wife syndrome, and yet you love her. Except for Bill. Bill is kind of just plain old bad.

[13:31] Max Miller: He's pretty evil. But everyone else, Fagin and the Artful Dodger.

[13:54] Max Miller: Who are struggling but are also pretty happy. Yeah. You know, when they are not worried about dying or eating, they're actually having a pretty great time. Right. And I don't mean that in a jarring way. It's not like, oh, I'm so hungry. Let's sing a song about it. It's actually more of like, life sucks, but hey, it's a fine, fine life. And I find that so inspiring and really beautiful because never once do I feel the author looking down on these people. Never once do I feel the author trying to manipulate our sympathies for them. These are people who are trying to be happy with what they have and are being super scrappy in their way of survival, which is why I think America loved it so much. Because we are a country made up of scrappy beggars. Right. Yeah.

[14:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. No, it's true. And so here comes a story full of characters who are going against the tide a little bit, who are paving their own way, who are trying to live life because they want the freedom to live their own life and all of the consequences that come along with it. It feels, like I said, a very British-American musical. Yeah.

[15:25] Max Miller: I'm trying to think before this. Obviously, musicals were almost always based on novels and plays, and they were rarely original material. But there aren't that many that I can think of from that time that are based on something so unbelievably popular that had already been made into a half-dozen movies that had done really well in America, as well as England, that everybody knew the story. And it's like by the 80s and gosh, by the year 2000, when we've got Legally Blonde and 9 to 5 and stuff, that's all that musicals would be based on. But here, it's not the kind of off-the-beaten-path novels and plays of Rodgers and Hammerstein that they're using as source material. It's like, nope, we're doing something that is tried and true and everyone knows it.

[16:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And it works. It works.

[16:18] Max Miller: Yeah. And while there have been other musical adaptations of Dickens novels, Christmas Carol, obviously, there are other ones that have not been as successful, Tale of Two Cities.

[16:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Pickwick.

[16:33] Max Miller: So, sure, Pickwick. So, why do you think this one works? I think it's the score, first of all. It's the music. Every single song is fantastic. There are some that don't work as well outside of the musical. You know, My Name that Bill Sykes sings. I don't listen to that and hum that walking down the street. But within context of the show, it is haunting. You are scared of this character and he can't do all of the things on stage that he does in the book to make you hate him so much. And so, it takes a song to get that across. And I think it does that so well. Not easy, by the way. It's not easy to have a villain sing a song and you're supposed to hate him because of it.

[17:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Yeah, no. The score from beginning to end is, I want to say, flawless.

[17:32] Max Miller: It's pretty fantastic. So, let's talk about the guy who wrote it. And this brings us to yet another piece of what makes this musical so special. Its book, music, and lyrics are all by one person, Mr. Lionel Bart. There are a few others in musical theater history. Obviously, Meredith Wilson from Music Man. Most recently, Michael R. Jackson from A Strange Loop. But they are very rare that somebody writes the entire thing. It's even more rare that that person doesn't read music. Lionel Bart couldn't read music. And so, the way that he wrote this musical was he would hum the song to a friend, write down the lyrics, but it was really up to somebody to transcribe kind of the genius in his brain onto the paper.

He also wrote the dialogue and drew out these characters and adapted them from a very long book and did so brilliantly. It's somebody who I think just instinctively understood the art form. Because once again, not a lot of education, not a lot of experience in writing American musical theater, but whatever he was swimming in, seeped into his pores and he just kind of gave birth to something perfect.

[18:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, it's true. I didn't realize that he couldn't read music because he wrote a lot of pop songs and everything. So, that's really, really interesting.

[19:01] Max Miller: From Russia with Love, right?

[19:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah.

[19:04] Max Miller: From the James Bond film. He, of course, had this gigantic hit of Oliver in his belt and then continued to write a lot of songs. He also became quite a party boy. And there was a point where his party life kind of exceeded that of his career. He tried to write a couple of other musicals later down the line, including a very famous flop called La Strada.

[19:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. I think it had one performance or something like that.

[19:34] Max Miller: Yeah, it's a legendary flop. Bernadette Peters was in it. And he invested a lot of his own money into making these productions happen and, of course, lost all of it. So, he was pretty destitute. And as the story goes, he sold all of the rights to Oliver for, what, like 250 pounds?

[19:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, he passed and future rights to the one musical that actually would make him money because he went bankrupt. It was rough. And what's crazy is some of those rights ended up down the line falling into Cameron McIntosh's lap, which is why he produced the musical. It's kind of a sad story because he seemed to be, like I said, a natural talent. It also makes me think about how things may have been different if he would have been able to be gay and open because I know he was also closeted. And I'm sure that didn't help the drug use, you know, that sort of thing. It always makes me wonder what if.

[20:37] Max Miller: Yeah, because, I mean, gosh, do we listen to any other musical from Lionel Bart today?

[20:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No.

[20:44] Max Miller: I feel like this is the one.

[20:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: This is it. But, I mean, what a show.

[20:49] Max Miller: Yeah. It opens in England and David Merrick, we've talked about him on the podcast before, the abominable showman, however you want to think of him. He sees it and thinks that it would be great to bring to New York. He expands it. It was originally orchestrated for, I think, 16 pieces or something. He expands it to 23, blows it up into a much bigger Broadway production. He also recasts the lead actor who played Fagin, Ron Moody. That role was played on Broadway by Clive Revell. The reason why that part was recast was because he was afraid that Ron Moody's performance would be offensive to Broadway because Fagin has been a bit of a stereotype, a harmful stereotype. Is that fair?

[21:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, absolutely. And the musical tones it so far down you wouldn't even know. In the novel, he is referred to as Fagin far less than he is referred to as simply the Jew.

[21:59] Max Miller: Oh, gosh.

[22:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And for all the love of Charles Dickens you have, he was a product of his time, most definitely. And had a lot of negative feelings toward a lot of different groups. And one of them that crops up in a lot of his books is the Jewish community of London. And a lot of the stereotypes that are associated with that community are put on Fagin in spades. And it can be played that way.

[22:32] Max Miller: He's such a sympathetic character in the musical.

[22:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And that's the other thing. And that's one of the reasons that Dickens is so interesting is because he's a sympathetic character in the book as well. So here's this, yes, here are all these bad stereotypes, but he doesn't make him into a villain. Even in the book, he's everyone's favorite character. And it is a lot darker than the musical, obviously, the book is, but you still like him.

[22:59] Max Miller: Do you think that this story follows some of the same tropes, and I don't mean that in a bad way, of fairy tales? Because what is it with stories about children being so dark from a very specific time? So many of our fairy tales that involve children were just incredibly dark, but they also served, I think, a psychological purpose. Does Oliver follow that at all, do you think?

[23:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know. I mean, yes, it does. And I'm trying to think, Dickens actually uses children a lot in his novels sympathetically. You sympathize with a child because they're a child, and so it's kind of an automatic, I don't need to make you feel for this person, feel for them because they're eight years old and living alone and having to run across the country away from horrible people.

[23:52] Max Miller: That's interesting. I also know that a big part of fairy tales is this idea that even through all the scary, the universe is conspiring for your good. And so much in Dickens' stuff, God's looking out for you. All of the stuff that you do not see happening in the details is all going to come together to make everything okay.

[24:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Always. Sometimes to a ridiculous degree from our perspective. Maybe in the 1830s, 40s, 50s, it wasn't felt that way. But now when you read something like Nicholas Nickleby or Oliver Twist, and he just happens to be taken in by this kind old rich man who just happens to be a long lost relative who just happens to, you know, there's a lot of that happening. And I think that not everyone in his books gets a happy ending, but I think every one of his books does have a happy ending. I can't think of one. He was definitely the eternal optimist, even though, you know, he saw the worst that was going on in England at the time and showcased that. At the end of the story, it all turns out for the best.

[25:09] Max Miller: That's cool. Oliver is a hit on Broadway. It runs almost 800 performances. It becomes a movie in the late 60s. It wins so many Academy Awards. I forget how many Academy Awards Oliver won. It's the last musical to win Best Picture until Chicago.

[25:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Really? Wow.

[25:34] Max Miller: It was really following this line of My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, American in Paris, all of these musicals winning Best Picture. And Oliver really is the end of that era.

[25:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Do you like the movie?

[25:49] Max Miller: I do.

[25:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Ron Moody's back to playing Fagin, by the way, when the movie comes out.

[25:52] Max Miller: Yes, and he's wonderful in it.

[25:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And he's fantastic.

[25:55] Max Miller: I also just love the production design of it. It's so well done. I can't recall now, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, but I feel like I watched the movie several times. And so when I was reintroduced to the stage show, there were several songs that they had cut out that I really missed. And I can't recall exactly which those are. It might be Oompa-Pompa. I'm not sure if that's in the movie. I can't remember, but-

[26:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: My Name is one of them, for sure.

[26:23] Max Miller: Yes, My Name.

[26:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because they decided that Bill Sykes was not going to sing in the movie.

[26:27] Max Miller: But I feel like there were several that were taken out. And I was like, oh.

[26:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think I Shall Scream is taken out.

[26:33] Max Miller: Oh, I think you're right.

[26:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, which is one of my favorites. Granted, it does not move the plot along, so it's fine to take out from that perspective. And for a movie, you might want to do that. But I think if it's ever taken out on stage, it's a real shame because it's a charming song.

[26:50] Max Miller: And once again, shows the complexity of these characters.

[26:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. Because Mr. Bumble is not a wholly evil person. He's just trying to do his job in a very difficult situation.

[27:05] Max Miller: And somebody who we would look down upon and yet also see ourselves in because he's also trying to woo a lady and then also getting stuck in an unhappy marriage. There are relatable aspects of each of these people, no matter what social class you may find yourself in.

[27:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, let's talk through the show. I'm really excited to talk through this one. The show begins with an army of children, which always like a disaster, right? It's usually a very expensive thing to do.

[27:36] Max Miller: We love kids. Food, glorious food. We're in this factory populated by children.

[27:48] Max Miller: And they are going to breakfast?

[27:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, or something like that. Maybe their one meal. Yeah. Oh, sure. Thank you. Usually they usually they did get two. Um, but the workhouses of England were actually very diverse and some were not that bad.

[28:01] Max Miller: But Dickens shows the worst of the worst. These workhouses meant for children and living terrible lives. What kind of children would be in these? Are they all orphans or...?

[28:15] Max Miller: So mostly orphans. However, what it was more often was that they had a mother. Um, sometimes a father, but usually they had a mother. The father had left and the mother and child are now destitute. And so the mother has two options: one is to essentially sell the kid. It was not legal then, but there were kind of ways around it, or they go into the workhouse. And so the mother would often be in a workhouse as well, but usually not together. There are times when they could be, but very often they would be separated.

[28:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And there are like Les Mis.

[28:55] Max Miller: Yes, exactly. And there are hundreds and hundreds of these stories of this happening. It was a definite problem. Um, but you have to think the workhouse was an effort to make it so that they could eat, so that they weren't starving on the street. Because that's what would have been happening before the workhouse. So even though now we look back and say, "Oh my God, it was terrible," and it was for many people, it was actually designed as a mercy to stop homelessness. That was the intention. And often it was played out properly and often it was not, and that's what Dickens chooses to focus on.

[29:38] Max Miller: As they're marching in to get their meal, they're dreaming of all of the things that they could be eating, which I just love so much. The things that Lionel Bart brings to our attention are just so visceral: hot sausage and mustard, cold jelly and custard, peaches and cream. Like just really painting the picture for us. It's like the first time that I had heard about a lot of these weird English foods.

[30:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, Victorian England especially. It's like what? Cold jelly? Totally different from what we would call jelly, you know?

[30:09] Max Miller: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I love it. We could talk about food all day. Talk to me about gruel though. What on earth is gruel?

[30:17] Max Miller: So yeah, that's what they end up getting is gruel, and there were lots of types of gruel. Gruel goes back to the Middle Ages. It really is just a porridge, and it could be made very fancy with sugar and alcohol in it and meat even. But what Oliver was probably eating was what's known as water gruel, and that is simply barley or sometimes oats mixed with water.

[30:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So it's like oatmeal.

[30:46] Max Miller: Yeah, I was gonna say like when oatmeal hasn't completely absorbed the water yet.

[30:53] Max Miller: Yeah, well, and it's usually a lot more watery. Like maybe today you'd put like a quarter cup of oatmeal and a cup of water. That would be like a quarter cup of oatmeal and a half gallon of water. You know, you're mostly getting water here. And one thing that was often done, so they'd make the gruel and then they would strain out the oats and use those to make another pot. And so really what you're getting at the end of the day is water that is fortified with some of the residue from the oats or barley. And that's often what water gruel was, and it was something that was made for invalids, which is what they called sick people back then. You know, it was something that went down easily, easy to digest. But it could also be what you got in prison and stuff, but also any calories whatsoever.

[31:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That sounds like celery water, you know? I don't understand how that's supposed to give you any energy whatsoever.

[31:55] Max Miller: Yeah, I mean it wouldn't, or give you very, very little. But I think in the musical that's usually what they show is just a basic oatmeal. It's like a porridge, very bland. They wouldn't be adding sugar. They wouldn't probably even add salt or anything, butter. Bland, but it fills you up.

[32:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, he wanted more, so it couldn't be that bad. Is it good?

[32:18] Max Miller: Don't feel bad for Oliver. He wanted seconds, so he thought it was delicious. I mean that brings us to the moment of the story. Yeah, which is the inciting event: the audacity of this young child who's just finished his gruel after "Food, Glorious Food" to go up to Mr. Bumble and say, "Please, sir, I want some more."

[32:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, strategic and radical and brilliant of Mr. Charles Dickens because how dare this child?

[32:45] Max Miller: Right, the audacity! And this is not an irrelevant thing for us nowadays. I hear it consistently: how dare you, younger generation, the entitlement? How dare you ask for more? Why, when I was younger, I had one spoonful of gruel. You're lucky for it! What is that? What is that punishment? You know what? I think it's bad memories. You know, I think that we like to think that we were much better when we were kids than the kids are now, but we're the same. We're the same. It's everybody's the same. It's just so relevant and beautiful and changes storytelling, I think, forever, this one moment in this huge epic story.

[33:40] Max Miller: So Oliver asks for more because he is so audacious. He is sold by Mr. Bumble to a funeral home.

[33:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Before we go there, we do need to talk about one of your favorite songs.

[33:56] Max Miller: I shall scream! I shall scream! So we got Mr. Bumble, who's running the factory. We've got Widow Cornelia, and he's trying to woo her.

[34:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, and she's playing hard to get, but it's not that simple either. It's not just like Will Parker and Annie. They're such interesting characters where she's brassy and loud, but at the same time is feigning this feminine delicate femininity.

[34:24] Max Miller: I think she wants to be the damsel, and she is not. You know, she's not.

[34:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, she's more like the Trunchbull.

[34:32] Max Miller: Yes, that's what she's more like, except she doesn't want to be that, you know? Right? Instead, she wants to have her linen handkerchiefs. It's just such a fun character piece. Once again, coming from people who were just yelling at a child for wanting more gross porridge.

[34:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, that's why I hate when that song is not there because I think it's so important to have the ABA of that opening scene and the cruelty of them and bounce him, trounce him down the stairs. And then you have this very light, and you get to see the other side of them when they're not at work. And then you go straight into "Boy for Sale," which is one of the darkest songs of musical theater history when you think about what is going on: selling this child.

[35:26] Max Miller: They do sell Oliver by the end of "Boy for Sale" to a funeral home, which is dark, and I also find hilarious because like his one selling point is that he looks sad, right?

[35:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And he'll make an excellent pallbearer.

[35:47] Max Miller: Yeah, exactly! Or as though he's so deceiving with his looks that he can get people to buy products or have the funeral experience that they're looking for. He's just a sad little boy who's hungry. Like that's the reality of the situation.

[36:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What are the names of the funeral people?

[36:09] Max Miller: Mr. Sourberry.

[36:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, um, they have a wonderful song. "That's Your Funeral."

[36:18] Max Miller: Yeah. Yeah, another great character piece. They have him sleep among the coffins, and this is the first time that we really get to hear from Oliver all by himself, and he sings the very well-known song "Where Is Love?"

[36:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which is there any sweeter moment?

[36:34] Max Miller: Yes.

[36:35] Max Miller: But I think it's one of the heart... I think that Lionel Bart was cruel for writing that for a child because it is actually not an easy song to sing.

[36:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Says Max, who sang it.

[36:45] Max Miller: Yeah, eight or nine. First of all, it has a very wide range, and there's a lot of melismatic work in it. It's slow, but for an eight or nine-year-old, that's not easy to do. And in the movie, this and several other songs, the boy who played Oliver, who has a really interesting later on life, um, he sang, but he had no training in singing and dancing. He sang, but the music director had to bring in his daughter to do some of the high notes because even as a little boy, he couldn't hit those high notes because Lionel Bart wrote for, I think, a voice that doesn't exist.

[37:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's interesting. Well, once again, he's just humming it to a pianist and without any knowledge of pedagogy or passagios or anything like that.

[37:38] Max Miller: Um, that's really interesting. Definitely look up the kid who played him. He might have become the sperm donor for Michael Jackson's children.

[37:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, you didn't see that coming, did you?

[37:51] Max Miller: He was best friends with Michael Jackson.

[37:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm dead.

[37:55] Max Miller: The little boy who played Oliver in the musical, in the movie.

[38:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, later became, actually at a young age, became good friends with Michael Jackson, and they were about the same age, just about a month apart, and stayed good friends, and he was one of many donors for Michael Jackson's three children. They don't know if he was one of them who actually made it, but um, yeah, but he was a contestant.

[38:29] Max Miller: See, the cultural footprint of Oliver is even bigger than I expected.

[38:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's crazy.

[38:33] Max Miller: Yeah, so "Where Is Love?" I honestly don't think Lionel Bart was writing that song for a little boy. I think he was writing it for a gay man, personally.

[38:40] Max Miller: But yeah, the next day little Oliver meets Noah Claypole, who is another employee of the Sourberries at the funeral home, and he says some really inflammatory things about Oliver's mother, who obviously is gone, died, and had left him at the workhouse. And so Oliver stands up for himself. Once again, how dare he stand up for himself and really starts pummeling on this kid who's much older than he is. So great, the little scrappy fighter just totally takes him down, and the Sourberries come in and trap him and trap little Oliver in a coffin because he's just completely out of control. And how on earth in the process he escapes, and he runs into the streets, and now we come into this new chapter of Oliver's life on the streets. One of the first people that he meets is one of the most beloved characters of the entire piece, the Artful Dodger. How would you describe this little kid?

[39:49] Max Miller: Far older than his years. He has... he's been on the streets, and he has learned how to survive by, you know, stealing and conning people, but he does it with such charm, and he clearly wants to be at a much higher station than he ever will be. He even dresses as if he is a gentleman, except that the clothes are tattered and patchy, you know, but it's just his mind.

[40:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Freaking most gentleman thing.

[40:23] Max Miller: Yeah, yes. He is the most dapper street urchin you'll ever meet in your life.

[40:28] Max Miller: Yeah, truly the audacity of these characters is just so, so endearing. He takes in Oliver and says, "You can be part of our clan, like the clan that I belong to," and sings yet another fantastic perfect song, "Consider Yourself."

[40:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I mean truly you say the title of the song and every musical theater person is at least going to know the first four bars, you know what I mean?

[40:49] Max Miller: Well, it's one of those... I mean this show has so many great huge numbers, you know, the chorus can be as big as you can afford, essentially, which I think is one of the reasons why it's often done with community theaters. It's like we have 80 people who want to do this show. Perfect! Let's do Oliver! Because it's not just one or two big songs that they can be in; they can be in, you know, half of the show. And it also feels like the tradition of music halls from England where you get your audience with a couple rounds of beer, and they're going to sing, you know, at least three choruses of "Consider Yourself" with you.

[41:33] Max Miller: Yeah, all of these rousing sort of anthems. So the Artful Dodger takes Oliver to this clan who's overseen by Fagin.

[41:42] Max Miller: He created this little pyramid scheme, if you will, of pickpockets. He trains these little kids to steal. Steal only enough to not be noticed, and then everybody brings all of that together, and that's how everyone survives. And he's been doing it for a very long time. So this is not a young whippersnapper of a gentleman. He's old and weathered and also lovable. He teaches Oliver how you do it in a song called "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two." We also meet some other people who are maybe not necessarily in the clan, but adjacent to it, most important being Nancy. You mentioned that she's a prostitute. So yeah, so she actually probably got introduced to Fagin, if I remember the book correctly, because she is married to someone who was in the clan, Bill Sykes.

So Bill was a protege of Fagin. And one of the dark things is, and he delves more into it in the book, but there are hints to it in the musical, is the Artful Dodger going to turn into this? And Nancy, one reason why Nancy treats the Artful Dodger so kindly is she doesn't want him to go down this path, because she's already in the world. You know, she leads a very dark life, except she is that optimism. She probably has the worst situation of anyone in this show. She's a prostitute. Her pimp is essentially her husband, Bill Sykes, who has taken criminality to the next level. You know, he's a murderer. He is dark and abusive, physically abusive to her. Abuses her physically, and yet she's there singing "It's a Fine Life," and, you know, "I'd Do Anything for You." And she is the quintessential prostitute with a heart of gold.

[43:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[43:48] Max Miller: When we think of that, that is what Nancy is. And I was thinking about the difference between this musical and, say, "Carousel," when we were looking at Julie Jordan, someone who also reacts in a similar way to domestic abuse and being in an abusive relationship, or even maybe Audrey in "Little Shop of Horrors." With Nancy, you have somebody who can take care of herself.

[44:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[44:14] Max Miller: She is constantly surrounded by danger, and in the face of that darkness, like you're saying, she is choosing that life. She is not a victim to it, and for whatever reason, she believes that this life is better than being a prisoner to the wealthy class of needing to walk around with your nose in the air and look down on everybody. I would much rather be in the situation that I am in, where I don't believe I'm better than anybody, but also I'll be hanged if I ain't just as good. You know what I mean?

[44:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, she's a fantastic character. And she, honestly, my favorite songs in the show are her songs. And I think that that's why I love the '94 Cameron Mackintosh album the most, because it's one of the few times where they cast a perfect belter for these songs and had the recording equipment to do it justice. Because if you listen to some of the early recordings, you can tell that the singer has the chops, but the microphones don't have the chops to pick up a belter. I mean, it's like when you listen to Ethel Merman. It's like, I'm sure she's better than she sounds on these crackly old recordings. So in 1994, they had that ability. And when she sings "It's a Fine Life," and I mean, "As Long As He Needs Me" later on, they're transcendent.

[45:47] Max Miller: That's so cool. You talked about the relationship between Nancy and the Artful Dodger, and we get to see it on display here with another legendary song, "I'd Do Anything," where she is playing into his fantasy of how the rich act.

[46:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Very playful. You know, she knows that he's never going to be doing any of this stuff, of course. I mean, first of all, he's a little kid, and she's grown. She's probably, you know, in her mid-20s by now. What's interesting is even in this playful song, and it's done in a playful way, but there is a little bit of the darkness of their actual situation that comes in. You know, she says, would you climb a hill? Anything? Pick a daffodil? Anything? Something else? Anything? Or even fight my Bill? What, fisticuffs? You know, and she brings Bill into the song. The reality of it.

[46:44] Max Miller: They're smiling about it, but right there, the fact that she brings him in, in that way, you can tell she is scared of him. She knows what a horrible thing it would have to be for Dodger to fight him, you know, and so it's really interesting how the darkness always kind of creeps back in into all of these songs.

[47:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So as you were saying, which I didn't know, so Bill Sykes was a protege of Fagin. He's now become something of a monster.

[47:21] Max Miller: I mean, he's so bad that if this had been written after 1888, you would say, oh, he's based on Jack the Ripper. But this was 50 years before. And like I said in the book, you know, obviously they go into more depth, but he's notorious. The police throughout London know him. Everyone knows him, and he sings a song about his reputation, about how horrible he is. You know, he's not a petty thief. He is a murderer, a brute, and he doesn't care if you're poor, rich, middle class, a policeman, doesn't matter. You need to be scared of him, and he revels in that.

[48:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And is it fair to say that the police are looking for him?

[48:10] Max Miller: I think all the time.

[48:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I ask because it plays a very important part in the second act, this idea that Bill doesn't want anyone to know where he is and where he lives.

[48:23] Max Miller: Right. He has built this persona based on infamous notoriety and also a complete ability to disappear. Yeah, the police know about him and everything, but his hands are clean because he is so good at his job, because Fagin taught him to be so good at deceit and hiding and everything. And so, later on, when he does stuff that is a little bit more public, then it does become a problem.

[48:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The first act ends with Oliver going with the Artful Dodger on a day's work of pickpocketing, and he gets caught on his first day on the job, which is a huge problem for Fagin and the entire group, because here's this new kid who they can't trust to be quiet.

[49:20] Max Miller: Right. They don't know if Oliver is going to spill the beans about where they live, who they are, and kind of how far their reach is. So now, in the second act, the big plot point is how do we get Oliver back? Not because we want to save him, but because we want to save ourselves.

[49:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[49:40] Max Miller: Fagin wants to get him back to not spill the beans, but Bill will kill him.

[49:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Ooh, right.

[49:47] Max Miller: Bill has no problem killing a child.

[49:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[49:50] Max Miller: The beginning of act two starts with a drinking song, "Oompa Pa." I just have to give a shout out. It has some great, funny lyrics.

[49:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Such a great song.

[49:59] Max Miller: And then, when Bill comes in, I think, is this the first time we see Bill? Here, we've been talking about him this entire time, but I think he doesn't actually enter until act two.

[50:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And he tells Nancy that she needs to go get Oliver.

[50:17] Max Miller: She doesn't want to, but she ultimately agrees because he beats the crap out of her.

[50:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[50:24] Max Miller: And then she sings "As Long As He Needs Me."

[50:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow, such an amazing song.

[50:30] Max Miller: Which, I don't know, people might look at it as problematic, but I just think it's actually very honest. You know what? Yeah, maybe if you sang it now, it would be a little problematic. But this was a different time. She was in a different place. And even now, you can talk yourself into a lot of things.

[50:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sure can.

[50:52] Max Miller: You know, when you have feelings for someone, you can put up with a lot. Whether you should or shouldn't, that's neither here nor there. But the song is, yeah, he's horrible, but if I wasn't here, he'd fall apart.

[51:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which makes it heartbreaking.

[51:07] Max Miller: It is because it is problematic that it does make it heartbreaking, you know, that she has deluded herself. That is huge. I love that perspective so much. If it wasn't problematic, it wouldn't be heartbreaking.

[51:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[51:23] Max Miller: And that's the difference, I feel, between this and "Carousel." Because in "Carousel," it's not really seen as problematic. It's seen as, you know, oh, yeah, he hits me, but he does it out of love. The end. What's the use of wondering?

[51:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[51:41] Max Miller: Whereas this is, he hits me, and it's not in any way trying to say that that is a good thing. And yeah, the song is from the 1958 or '59. But even in the book, in the 1830s, it was not okay. It was not, you know...

[52:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It was not okay to treat women this way.

[52:02] Max Miller: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very different from how it's sometimes portrayed. It's beautiful.

[52:09] Max Miller: Now we meet up with Oliver. So what ended up happening was that he got arrested. And then, well, so the man who he pickpockets basically ends up kind of coming to his defense along with someone who works for him. Because they see pity on him, a boy who's hungry. And they do. And someone during the trial, and I can't remember if it's her or someone else now, but during the trial, they say, it wasn't him. It was these other boys. He was just standing there. And so he gets arrested for something that he didn't do. And so the man who he had pickpocketed takes pity on him and brings him in.

[53:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It just so happens that these people, when they look at him, they keep thinking that he bears an awful close resemblance to their departed daughter, their daughter who's passed on.

[53:19] Max Miller: So they feel that because he has that look, maybe that's also why they're being so sweet to him.

[53:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[53:27] Max Miller: This is when Oliver really does start to receive some love. He is fed. He is trusted. He's given five pounds to take to a bookstore along with some books to pay for them and to kind of settle the debt at this bookstore. So he's on his way to do that.

[53:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And he is intercepted by Nancy, who is on this mission that she was given from Bill. She pretends to be his mother and says, "Oh, my son, I've been looking for you everywhere." She's doing this very publicly in front of everyone. And they, of course, scold him because he's this very disobedient boy who has obviously run away from his mom.

[54:09] Max Miller: And how dare he do that? He's trying to say she's not my mother and no one believes him. She takes him, leaves the books, takes the money.

[54:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[54:21] Max Miller: Takes Oliver back to the clan. And then what happens?

[54:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, boy, I can't actually remember. I think Bill is there, isn't he?

[54:32] Max Miller: Sykes goes to like beat him up, right? To make sure that he never flees again or and definitely doesn't tell on them.

[54:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[54:40] Max Miller: Nancy steps in to try and save him. And there's this really kind of heated battle between the two. Sykes takes Oliver to make sure that he doesn't get away.

[54:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[54:50] Max Miller: Nancy leaves. In fact, everybody leaves. And Fagin is left wondering, kind of considering what has led him to be here. He spent most of his life doing this. But what if maybe he changed his life to be an honest one? And he sings this amazing song called "Reviewing the Situation," which sounds very different from the rest of the score. It has a lot of klezmer. It sounds very "Fiddler on the Roof" like if you want to think of it in those terms.

[55:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[55:20] Max Miller: But a real 11 o'clock number. I love that it's given to Fagin.

[55:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[55:24] Max Miller: And I love that he really does struggle with this. Would it be better? Or no, actually, I'm doing all right. Maybe it's not so good if I did this other thing. Because, I mean...

[55:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now we go back to the workhouse, the place from the very beginning with Mr. Bumble and Widow Corny who have now married. She did not scream as it turns out. And boy, oh boy, are they unhappily married. It's not going well. And this dying pauper kind of, OMS! OMS! For a pitiful woman, comes, gives them this very important piece of information with an Annie Lockett. Boy, there's a lot of musicals coming all into this one show. That Oliver's mother was this woman named Agnes who left a gold locket when she died in childbirth. And this pauper woman stole the locket and now she's giving it to the Widow Corny and Mr. Bumble with the knowledge that she, the dead mom, was actually the daughter of the people that Oliver was with.

Are you all following me? I hope so. This is what I said. Like Dickens tends to like everything falls together and it's just so perfect and hunky dory. I don't know why that's happening. For whatever reason, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm totally with them. I'm like, wow, this is magical. The reason that this pauper woman is telling them this is because they are wealthy. So maybe they can get some more money for knowing where Oliver is. Unfortunately, they don't really know where Oliver is.

[56:59] Max Miller: Now Nancy visits the place where Oliver was being rescued and confesses that she and Bill abducted Oliver and that she feels terrible about it and she believes that he belongs with them. So she is going to deliver him that night. Bill suspects that she's kind of up to something on that night, that she sneaks Oliver out of Fagin's clan and at the London Bridge, he confronts them. He knocks Oliver unconscious and clubs Nancy to death. And so she dies right here, right before the end. It's really dark and really, really sad. This is also the moment where I'm like, community theaters do this? Yeah. And you know, because often deaths are not done on stage like this and it is, you know, it's not a gunshot.

It's gruesome. It's gruesome. It's beating her and she's alive and stays alive. And he keeps shouting at her to close her damn eyes, close your eyes, woman, because she now dead, her eyes are open and staring up at him. And he's, you know, whatever guilt he is capable of feeling, he is feeling it and it is dark.

[58:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because he did it so publicly, this is when London turns on him. Because everybody loved Nancy. We love Nancy and he's not going to get away with this and he doesn't. He is caught because two policemen sneak up on him. One of them shoots him and the other one grabs Oliver. The policemen return Oliver to the Brownlows who, because of the people from the very beginning of the story, now realize that the little boy who was with them is actually their grandson. Yes. It's a lot of dark. It's a lot of light. It's a lot of life packed into one second act.

[59:35] Max Miller: Yeah. And it is. I mean, it's a dark show from the beginning, interspersed with a lot of, you know, light songs and stuff. But that last part, it gets really dark. A lot of people die.

[59:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In a short period of time. Do you think that we're left at the end of the show feeling optimistic? Because I feel like the magic and the miracle of him ending up with his grandparents is meant to send us out of the theater with a degree of hope.

[1:00:09] Max Miller: Yeah, I think so. Do you think it works?

[1:00:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think so. I also think, because the way that the musical ends, which is different than the book, in the musical, Dodger and who, you know, they're all these kids, but really Dodger is the one kid that you really care about other than Oliver. He and Fagin get back together and go off into the sunset. And so you do have that kind of happy ending, even for them. Because now they can go about what they feel like they were called to do, but without the looming threat of Bill Sykes.

[1:00:46] Max Miller: Right. Yeah. I mean, but even so, it's still, there is still a darkness to the end. But I do think it is, the audience is left feeling like, okay, Oliver is going to be fine. This is going to be good for him, you know. And we can forget all the rest of London in the 1830s at this point.

[1:01:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Probably best because it's a rough place to live. Do you think this story eases the guilt of the privileged or does it confront it?

[1:01:20] Max Miller: Maybe a little bit of both, because I think it confronts it. And the only way that that guilt is eased is to kind of do the right thing and acknowledge what is going on around them. Because it's Mr. Brownlow and the Artful Dodger in the same place. They're living, you know, side by side. And you know, it's the fact that Mr. Brownlow does take in Oliver and everything. Granted, he turns out to be family, so there's that. But even so, Brownlow didn't know that when he took him in and felt that guilt.

[1:02:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I only ask because I agree with you. I think that it presents it very objectively, you know, of course with a lot of warmth and a lot of darkness. And that's why it feels objective. But having lived in Los Angeles and been surrounded by such a devastating homelessness situation, houselessness, and also continually hearing about, I mean, just this morning I opened up my little email from the New York Times, and it was showing the huge disparity between like company stock prices and living wages, and how those were kind of steadily growing with each other until the 80s, and now it's just gone almost opposite directions. And so I wouldn't want to have a conversation about Oliver without thinking about the societies that we create and actively participate in and what's good about them and what's a fine life and also what are those dark places that we don't always like to shed light on but probably need to.

[1:03:15] Max Miller: There is no simple answer. But I do think that it probably begins with love. I don't know, am I being like too idealistic to be like, love is the answer, but I mean, I think I have to believe it begins there. Acknowledgement is the answer, or the first step, you know, you have to kind of admit that it is there. And I think that that's what, in books like this, and Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House, that is what Dickens does. He acknowledges this disparity. I don't think he takes a firm moral stance, this is what needs to be done, until A Christmas Carol, which is very, wow, interesting. This is what you have to do. This is, you know, it's a little more overt in its moral storytelling. But even just acknowledging these different parts of society at that time was a very big thing.

[1:04:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You look at someone like, you know, the other big, big authors of the time are, you know, the Bronte sisters, or if you go back a little further, Jane Austen. I mean, I love Jane Austen. But the poor people in Jane Austen are millionaires compared to today, it's like, oh, they only have four servants and stuff, you know, and then so it's really the disparity between the wealthy and the uber wealthy. That's the societal clash there. You don't even talk about the poor people. There are some other books that do deal with that, but they're very rare. Dickens is one of the first to really bring that to the forefront with some popularity. You know, it's like, you can tell all the stories you want, but if nobody's reading them, then it doesn't really matter.

And that's what Dickens did and kind of brought that. And there was actually, there were repercussions, in part due to his writings, due to his bringing these things to the forefront, whether it was things being changed in the prison system and the debt system and the workhouse system and the food that was served there and everything. These aren't directly tied necessarily, but he brought this stuff up and put it out there into the public mind because a lot of people don't acknowledge that it even exists.

[1:05:43] Max Miller: And it's not necessarily willfully. It's more of just out of sight, out of mind, but he made it be in your sight. No matter where you lived in England, I mean, people were reading these things and hearing these stories about people living very different lives than they were. And once again, one of the most powerful things about this musical is that they're not pitied. They are humans with lives that they've chosen and appreciate as well. So I often think that that has to be a big part of the solution as well, is that not everybody needs to have a life that looks like mine, but everybody needs to have a life that's seen and noticed.

[1:06:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Max, thank you so much for doing this with me.

[1:06:35] Max Miller: Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad that we got to do this. And when you sent me a list of musicals and I saw Oliver on there, I was like, oh good, this one hasn't been covered. It was like that and The Secret Garden would have been the two I would have, maybe Cabaret jumped on. So I'm really glad about that.

[1:06:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm so glad that you picked this one. It's not a show that I think of when I think of musical classics, but I am leaving this conversation thinking a lot about it. So thank you for that.

[1:07:05] Max Miller: As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, just like our friends, Mark and Ian, be sure to email me at amusicalpodcast@gmail.com. Be sure to follow us on social media at amusicalpodcast on Twitter and Instagram. We've also got a TikTok. We have Patreon! We also can go to our TeePublic store where we've got lots of amazing listener designs and any of the profits we receive from that will be donated to Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. Above all, thank you for being part of this podcasting community because truly it's one of the greatest gifts that I have by doing this show is getting to know and connect with all of you.

[1:07:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Hey, Mr. Max, tell us about how we follow you and everything you're up to.

[1:07:52] Max Miller: Yeah, so YouTube is the best way to see me. Every week, every Tuesday, I do a video, Tasting History with Max Miller. Pretty consistent. I love it. Never missed a Tuesday. You know, go on there. Start with the gruel episode where I talk about Oliver.

[1:08:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then I'm also on-

[1:08:08] Max Miller: We'll definitely put that in the show notes.

[1:08:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: We'll put that in the show notes. Right?

[1:08:11] Max Miller: Do it. I'm also on Instagram and Twitter, Tasting History with Max Miller. Search there and you'll find me.

[1:08:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Amazing. Congratulations on all of your amazing success. Thank you for all of the history that you're bringing us, for all the history you brought to this episode.

[1:08:24] Max Miller: I couldn't have done it by myself. So thank you.

[1:08:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you. And congratulations on this show. I really enjoy listening to it.

[1:08:32] Max Miller: You're very kind. Thank you.

[1:08:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I miss musical theater in my life. So this is a nice little tidbit.

[1:08:37] Max Miller: Musical theater misses you. Do you sing on your show?

[1:08:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Not really.

[1:08:42] Max Miller: No.

[1:08:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You should.

[1:08:44] Max Miller: I sing mostly now for my cats. I'll sing the entire score to Martin Garre, but change every single word to my cat's name. And they-

[1:08:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love that.

[1:08:55] Max Miller: ... hate it. But you know what? That's all right.

[1:08:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You know, tough crowd.

[1:08:59] Max Miller: Yeah. I would love to see that, though, where you're like, look.

[1:09:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Maybe.

[1:09:04] Max Miller: Maybe eventually.

[1:09:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Eventually, I'll bring it in.

[1:09:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Everybody out there, thank you for listening. And remember, consider yourself one of us.

[1:09:18] Max Miller: Bye.

[1:09:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Bye.

[1:09:20] Max Miller: Bye.

[1:09:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Bye.

[1:09:22] Max Miller: Bye.