Music, lyrics, and book by Lionel Bart. A Theatre Under the Stars production directed by Shel Piercy. At Malkin Bowl on Wednesday, July 15. Continues in rep until August 22.

The most striking thing about this production of Oliver! is that director Shel Piercy has made significant additions to the script.

Piercy has used quotes from the source material, Charles Dickens’s novel, Oliver Twist, to create a prologue, to cover scene changes, and to make the deaths of two characters, Bill Sikes and Nancy, less graphic.

Lionel Bart’s book for Oliver! has never been strong, and the Dickens quotes add context and texture. In Piercy’s staging of Nancy’s death, she sheds her dress, which becomes her remains. It’s effective.

Other liberties work less well. In the director’s story-theatre conceit, Oliver! is being performed by what seems to be a band of players at the Chelsea Village Fair: before the show and at intermission, audience members compete in midway activities, including a 20-yard dash, and, before the performance proper—and sometimes during it—actors address the audience in character. Stephen Aberle, who’s playing Fagin, interrupts “Consider Yourself” to insist that audience members link arms and sing along. And the show stops again to award a trophy to the audience member who won the 20-yard dash. These intrusions kill the already minimal momentum.

Most damagingly, Piercy’s direction of his actors is coarse. Oliver! is about a poorhouse boy who falls in with a band of street urchins led by Fagin, a career criminal of variable charm. When Oliver is accused of picking pockets, he meets Mr. Brownlow, who may provide him with a link to his past. On the London streets, there’s also a subplot involving the sociopathic Sikes and his girlfriend, the long-suffering Nancy.

At the top of the show, when we’re still in the workhouse, we meet the beadle, Mr. Bumble and his ladylove, the Widow Corney. Together, they sing their suggestive mating song, “I Shall Scream”. In a performance so big you could see it from the moon, Damon Calderwood hollers and grunts his way through the role of Mr. Bumble. Piercy’s staging of “I Shall Scream” is vulgarly over the top. Playing a bully named Noah Claypole, Nicholas Bradbury speaks with his mouth full of food, spewing chunks of it. None of this is hilarious.

Aberle’s Fagin is only okay—minimally charming and minimally menacing—but his singing is pure. Playing a little crook called the Artful Dodger, Nathan Piasecki is a show-biz winner, and Carly Ronning is particularly strong as Oliver. Singing “Where Is Love?”, she seems to be discovering the lyrics for the first time, which allows you to feel you’re doing the same. The whole kids’ chorus is endearing. Though never deeply compelling, Elizabeth Marie West’s Nancy grows as the evening progresses.

Set designer Brian Ball’s painted backdrops are handsome. Highlights of Keri Minty and Shelley Stewart Hunt’s choreography include a kind of human merry-go-round, in which smaller cast members ride on the linked arms of bigger folk. And, under Kerry O'Donovan’s direction, the 11-piece orchestra sounds great.

Piercy’s broad take makes it impossible to invest in the material emotionally, however—and watching two long acts that you don’t care about is boring.