Cameron Mackintosh was Elaine Paige's special guest on her Radio 2 Musicals show for her 200th programme. He chose Oliver as one of his 'essential' musicals and Elaine brought up his new production of Oliver. He said how pleased he was Rowan Atkinson had agreed to do it, and there had been a lot of public interest in it.....but absolutely no mention of WHY this was, i.e. I'd Do Anything, or of Jodie!
A bit of a glaring omission.

Whoopsie Cameron, don't make it too obvious that you aren't happy with Jodie being Nancy!

Elaine Page's laugh annoys me BEYOND BELIEF :P

Haha I also noticed the lack of anything to do with IDA. Grr...

this was kind of smart of him really, because it could have opened up all of the controversy surrounding the show, and that isn't what the interview was all about. he probably knew this.

he could have given it a wee mention, absolutely, but in retrospect, it was an embarrassing for him in general for his actions.

Yes, I can see he probably didn't want to discuss past IDA history but he could have spoken to Elaine before the interview, saying he didn't want to go over any controversy but would just give it a name-check at least.

It will be interesting to see how the publicity machine grinds out nearer the event. At the moment in the ads in the paper (well mine at least!) it just refers to Rowan Atkinson in big letters but this is fair enough as he has got the lead role. Nancy is not really a lead like 'Joseph' and 'Maria' was, but hopefully there will be proper acknowledgement of IDA's part in making the show nearer the time.