Oliver with a twist

It takes a feat of artful compression to reduce the episodic adventuring of Oliver Twist to a bare two hours' playingtime. And artful is just the word for Neil Bartlett's lean, sinewy adaptation of Charles Dickens's account of a little boy lost who is drawn into a London underworld of thieves.

The style of Bartlett's modestly involving production for an ensemble of 13 actors deserves the "artful" tag too. For I was struck more by the theatrical manners than the matter of this Oliver Twist. Shared Experience, the remarkable theatre company that specialises in adapting novels, creates powerful forms of physical and expressionistic theatre in the transfer process from page to stage. Bartlett does not match their imaginative skills.

Admittedly this director, no stranger to stylistic boldness, does capture the novel's dramatic twists and suspensive, humorous modes of narrative. Jordan Metcalfe's sturdy piping-voiced Oliver impressively falls victim to violence and charismatic Michael Feast's unctuous and comic but un-dangerous Fagin. This is a world where being poor remains a kind of moral delinquency.

Bartlett also effectively subdues Dickens's flashes of melodrama. Nicholas Asbury's imposing Bill Sykes, whose menace is of the still, strong, silent sort, murders Kellie Shirley's bland Nancy. But we only see his violent hand poised above her head. Similarly, Feast, who ends up howling with fury, limits the caricaturing, anti-Semitic vehemence of Dickens's portrayal of Fagin.

The production's emphatic theatricality, though, grates: Rae Smith's design is a magnified version of a glass-fronted box or Victorian "Penny Dreadful" Machine. But it looks like some bare, dilapidated inner stage or the framework of a spacious hovel: Fagin's not very dangerous young thieves, apart from Owen Sharpe's predatory "Artful" Dodger, emerge from trap doors in the floor.

Oliver's early life and his idyllic existence with Mr Brownlow does not fit with this environment. The mannered solo and unison speaking of Dickens's text, together with an odd variety of choral recitative and Gerard McBurney's music, which was culled from music-hall songs, selfconsciously draws attention to its own cleverness.

Until 27 March. Information 08700 500 511.

Oliver Twist