Fagin's "care in the community with a misguided twist!" - Oliver! in Chichester

But there is so much more to the character than that – as Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Oliver! shows (Chichester Festival Theatre until Saturday, September 7).

“He's a crook and he has made some terrible life choices but you see that journey in the song Reviewing The Situation where there's a huge amount of self-reflection on the choices he has made.

"We are all flawed. We all have sides to us. We all have things about ourselves that we wish we could change. He is a criminal and he is manipulative and he's done a lot of wrong in his life but he looks after these children. He uses them for his own financial gains, of course, but he gives them opportunities. It is a kind of care in the community that he gives them with a slightly misguided twist! But he really does care about protecting then and treats them as family and is concerned for their safety. He says to them ‘Go out’ but he also says ‘Please make sure you come back.’

“Our Artful Dodger, Billy (Jenkins) is 16 or 17 which is not the normal age for Dodger who's usually much younger and I am a lot younger than Fagin usually is.

"He is usually seen as being in his 50s or 60s or something like that. I'm actually 38 which is actually the age that Ron Moody was when he played the character (in the film) but you felt he was a lot older.

“And I think it is really interesting the way that you can see the different ages, almost like a career progression with me being the father figure and then you've got Bill and Nancy and then you’ve got Dodger and Charlie and then you've got the boys and then you've got the purity of Oliver aged ten or 11, and you can see the choices that are ahead for them and you can think about what they're going to do. You see all the options.

"And you see this innocent soul Oliver turn up at the start of his journey.”

Part of the complexity of the character of Fagin is that he was written, as Simon says, “as an incredibly anti-semitic character”: “I am very proudly Jewish and my Jewish heritage is very important to me, and what is interesting in the book that he is rarely called Fagin. His called the Jew. So obviously there is one foot in anti-semitism but in a way it was the time and the circumstances. At the time people were scared of Jews.

“A lot of people who've seen the show are saying to me that's I am not doing it in a very Jewish way but I would say that I am playing him completely Jewish. I'm playing him like all of my family members. There is a lightness in the comedy which is very self-deprecating and I think that's Jewish, a very Jewish sense of humour that I channel.”

And in his cap Simon has his own Hebrew name embroidered: “It is important for me that my Jewish heritage is there.”

Tickets from Chichester Festival Theatre.