Sooty “stone” walls surrounded them, and more rags hung from an improvised clothesline.

But as the youths moved across the space, the illusion of Victorian England was broken suddenly when Leddy Center for the Performing Arts’ director, Elaine Gatchell, motioned for the music to stop, and then climbed on stage herself. Bringing the Epping cast into the present with some technical stage advice, she demonstrated the dance step in question and told the chorus, “Any time you dance, look in the direction you’re going!”

Leddy Center’s direction for its summer musical stems a century and a half to Charles Dickens’s London, with Lionel Bart’s “Oliver!” to be presented over three July weekends in the Leddy theater on Ladd’s Lane.

“Oliver!” is loosely based on Charles Dickens’s classic tale, “Oliver Twist,” which is about a runaway orphan in London’s underworld. It opened in that city on June 30, 1960, and premiered in the United States with a 1962 national tour, followed by a Broadway production opening in 1963.

The play won Tony Awards in 1963 for Best Composer/Lyricist, Best Conductor/Musical Director and Best Scenic Design, and is regularly revived on the Broadway and London West End stages. Many of its songs are considered show tune standards, including “Consider Yourself At Home,” “As Long As He Needs Me” and “Food, Glorious Food!”

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Gatchell and her husband Bruce, Leddy’s musical director, ran the cast through a dress rehearsal for the show, which opens Friday night, July 9. It’s a big cast, with plenty of orphans, teenage pickpockets and street vendors.

The youngest cast members, the orphans, looked on in innocent fear as Oliver, played by Spencer Gregory of Fremont, made his plea for “more gruel.” “Oliver” escaped, ran across the plank table and around the theater before Mr. Bumble, the orphanage director, caught him and sold him to a funeral director for five pounds.

But Oliver escapes, as any follower of the story knows, and finds his way to the London underground, where he’s taken in by Fagin, the mentor of a group of teenage thieves. He’s befriended by the Artful Dodger, the most adept of the pickpockets, and thinks he’s found a home among these outcasts. He meets Nancy, the mistress of thug Bill Sykes, and her friend Bet. Jennifer Cardin, as Nancy, appears on stage with a black eye and sings sarcastically that “It’s a Fine Life!”

Oliver and his friends are the poorest of the poor, the dregs of 19th-century London, a harsh place in a harsh time.

But there’s a happy ending, Gatchell said, and that’s part of the appeal.

“It’s nice to have the poor win once in a while,” she said.

Gatchell has directed the Leddy Center and its predecessor, the Epping Community Church Players, for 36 years.

“This is my fifth ‘Oliver!,’” she said with a smile. Though she presented the musical a mere three years ago, “everybody wanted to do it again,” she said.

There are Cockney accents, evil funeral directors, scheming criminals and singing street vendors, and there are large-scale dance numbers and single-spotlight solos. Despite the bleak background, there are moments of sheer fun, as when the downand- outers sing that “It’s A Fine Life!” And there are moments when the human spirit shines, as when Nancy risks — and eventually gives — her life for Oliver.

Gatchell cast Don LaDuke as the brutish Bill Sykes, Brendon McKallagat as the Dodger, and Steve Koch as Fagin. Cardin, as Nancy, was last seen as the ingenue in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” and LaDuke practiced his thuggishness as the black-sheep brother in the same play.

Gregory, as Oliver, has been with her “forever,” Gatchell said.

He started out as a Lost Boy in “Peter Pan,” was in “Charlie And the Chocolate Factory,” and played Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol” two years ago.

“He got too big to be ‘Tim,’ and now he’s the boy who brings Scrooge the turkey,” Gatchell said. Gregory, 9, said “Oliver!” is his fifth play at the Leddy Center, but his first leading role.

“It’s fun,” he said of acting. “I make a lot of friends.”

In addition to singing and acting, he said he plays guitar, drums and piano. A fourth-grader at Seacoast Charter School, he likes science and playing baseball and soccer, he said.

“Oliver!” is an exciting story, Gregory said. But he wouldn’t have wanted to be a child in Oliver’s time. “It was too violent,” he said. But though Oliver has a hard life, things work out in the end, Gregory added.

And if he were Oliver, Gregory knows what he would do differently. “I probably would not have asked for more food,” he said.

Leddy’s “Oliver!” will be presented July 9 through 25, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays and Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $18 and $16 and may be reserved by calling 679-2781 or visiting www.leddycenter.org.

“Oliver” has Cockney accents, evil funeral directors, scheming criminals and song and dance numbers.