Cameron Mackintosh’s life-long love of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!

And it is remembering that inspiration, that theatrical excitement that Sir Cameron returns with his new version on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage (until Saturday, September 7) – a version revised for modern times.

In the years in between, the great irony is that the musical which he has done more than anyone else to keep alive very nearly killed him in Southsea nearly 60 years ago.

“The point is that it has been the most extraordinary series of coincidences,” Sir Cameron says. “But it started in August 1960 when my aunt took me to see Oliver! when I would have been 13 coming up for my 14th birthday. The tickets were one and six and we queued up and then you had to run up the stairs to get the best seat in the balcony. I had never seen anything like it. I was 13 and I'd been going to the theatre since I was six with my aunt and I had decided at the age of eight that I was going to become a producer of musicals but I went to see this and it was just absolutely extraordinary. I had never seen anything like it physically in terms of the genius set by Sean Kenny (1929-1973, the Irish theatre and film scenic designer, costume designer, lighting designer and director). Kenny died very young but Lionel Bart could not work without him. He was the person who helped shape all of his musicals. Lionel Bart needed someone to visualise the world that he was writing about and Sean Kenny did Oliver!”

It was a landmark moment: “Oliver! was the first show ever where you changed the scenery in front of the audience. It was very raw and it was absolutely like nothing I'd ever seen. It had a huge impact on this 13-year-old, this amazing show with wonderful performances. I was just completely immersed.”

The show opened at the New theatre, now the Noël Coward which Sir Cameron owns: “That was the extraordinary thing, that this production that went around the world started off at an 850-seat theatre.

“I got my first job as a cleaner and stage hand at Drury Lane in 1965 and I heard there was a tour of Oliver! I became assistant stage manager on the first-ever tour of Oliver! in this country. It opened in November 1965 at the Opera House in Manchester and what I didn't realise that was that one of the assistant stage managers also had to be in the show. The other boy was completely tone deaf. I was not a very good singer or dancer but I was in it as a member of the ensemble and I played lots of small parts including a show-stopping scene with a pie cart!”

And it was in Manchester that Sir Cameron met Lionel Bart: “Lionel said ‘What are you going to do, my son, when you grow up?’ And I said ‘Mr Bart, my dream is to put on musicals like this one.’”

Which very nearly didn't happen. When the show came into the Kings Theatre in Southsea, Sir Cameron came perilously close to perishing above the stage. The Kings was of the last theatres in the country to have hemps or ropes to control the scenery going up and down. He was sent up to the fly floor where he saw a spaghetti junction of ropes tied to different bars: “Being 18 and very obedient I went up to undo the scenery and all the ropes were tangled up left and right. I untied it and as I untied it suddenly it went around my hand and the weight of the flat (a flat piece of theatrical scenery which is painted and positioned on stage so as to give the appearance of buildings or other background) suddenly grabbed me and pulled me in the air and before I knew it I was whizzing very fast towards the ceiling of the theatre. My head was about to crash forward.”

On the flat were the words “God is love”, and fortunately that proved to be the case for Sir Cameron: “The God is love flat hit the floor with a judder and that stopped me nine inches below the metal top of the theatre. The reason for that is that the King's theatre had a very low fly tower. Had that not been the case we would not have been having this conversation now. God decided that I was to survive! Otherwise I would have been killed by the show that I have done more than anyone else to keep alive!”

As for the show itself and its longevity: “I think like all great shows the primary reason is the story. It's one of the greatest novels Dickens ever wrote but also I think Lionel Bart's take on Oliver Twist is brilliant. Lionel from the outset freely adapts. It is not the complete Dickens novel which goes into some very dark areas but it is his own take on it with his own spirit of survival. I think that comes into it and his sense of family permeates it and also his sense of optimism. Even in the darkest places he finds that optimism.

“Lionel was the author of his own downfall. Shortly after I met him he sold the rights to Oliver! but the extraordinary thing about him is that he was never bitter about it. He just shrugged his shoulders and got on with life. Unfortunately he didn't make it to the millennium. All the abuse that he had given himself took its toll in the end.

“But the other great thing about Oliver! is that every song is just absolutely brilliant. In many musicals you think there are a few good songs but some of the rest are a bit pedestrian. But that’s absolutely not the case in Oliver! Every song drives the show along and with Matthew Bourne I have tried to reinvent it and I've added several scenes from the Dickens as well and have just tried to make it more contemporary.”

Cameron has done the massive productions of Oliver! in the past: “But what I have tried to do with this one is to create a version of the show that is similar in scale but goes back to the original show that I saw when I was a 13-year-old boy.

"I wanted to go back to its roots. We've got a terrific cast but they're as yet unknowns. People will know who they are when they have seen the show, but they won’t know them now.

"And I wanted that because it allows you to create a production which is a complete ensemble production in the way that Les Miserables is a complete ensemble production. I wanted a show that was not dependent on one big star name. I also wanted to tell the story in a different way and in a new way. We are still embracing everything that is great about the original but I wanted to make it something for modern times so that it really touches modern audiences.”

"I've wanted to go back to the theatrical excitement of when I originally saw it and I am really pleased with the way it has come out.”