Fagin was performed by Youth Music Theatre at the Wilde Theatre, South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Youth Music Theatre’s packed summer season continued with the premiere production of Fagin, with book and lyrics by Nicholas Scrivens and music by Paul Kessell-Holland, which imagines the infamous Oliver Twist villain having a more morally upright, real-life counterpart who comes into contact with Charles Dickens, known in the show by his pen-name Boz.
With its basis in the novel of the same name by Cecil A Cosner published in late 2014, Fagin follows the eponymous protagonist from his period of happiness with his wife Leeba, to his struggles to rebuild his life following his wrongful conviction for her murder, and accounts for the establishing of his family of street urchins as well as his contact with Bill Sikes and Nancy.
YMT’s production, expertly directed by Steven Dexter, featured a stellar young cast led by Yazdan Isfahani, whose fine interpretation of Frank Fagin perfectly captured the many different sides to his character as a sentimental gentleman with significant influence in the criminal underworld. Henry Waddon as Boz proved to be an engaging narrator who conveyed effectively the literary genius’ insatiable appetite for a good tale, while Imogen Gibb’s storytelling as the ill-fated Leeba was likewise charming, ensuring that she made her mark on the show notwithstanding her character’s premature demise.
Equally strong performances were delivered by Danielle Henderson as the charming yet unassuming Lucy, whose unrequited love for Fagin threads throughout much of the story, and by Anton Mouzykantskii as the kind-natured vicar who takes Fagin in following his fall from grace. The poignant Act II trio ‘The Secret Heart’, beautifully rendered by Isfahani, Henderson and Gibb, was not just a pivotal point in the plot but also one of the many highlights of this production.
George Green shone as the thoroughly unpleasant Lord Edward Beecham, whose nefarious activities precipitate Fagin’s downfall but whose social standing seems to elevate him above the law, and Rory McNeilage portrayed well an appropriately villainous henchman in Beecham’s employ. The production’s many other noteworthy performers included Abby Donoghue and Gareth Tilley as Nancy and the grown-up Bill Sikes, and a plethora of cameos such as Emmanuel Guron’s turn as affected thespian Mr Kean and Lydia Page’s as a thieving flowergirl.
Notwithstanding its fundamentally tragic plot about lives destroyed, loves lost, and the relationship between characters’ pasts and their prospective futures, Fagin was a bold choice for a work of musical theatre (the suggestion had come originally from Dexter) in that it invites inevitable comparison with Oliver!. Yet the respectable Frank Fagin of this show is a far cry – and a welcome change – from Lionel Bart’s pick-pocketing advocate as immortalised by Ron Moody.
Scrivens’ and Kessell-Holland’s Fagin is characterised by its tight organisation of script and song, with well-timed segments of dialogue seamlessly incorporated within musical numbers, and its recapitulations of material are always logical. The piano-based score, ably performed by the eight-piece pit orchestra led by musical director Tom Turner, includes a delightful pastiche of a Yiddish song in homage to the Jewish roots of Dickens’s Fagin, presented in a scene that showcased Phyllida Crowley-Smith’s visually stunning choreography.
YMT always succeeds in delivering an excellent production in every respect, and Fagin is certainly no exception. It therefore seems appropriate that the show’s immediate reach has already extended beyond the Wilde Theatre in that, uniquely for this season’s YMT productions, its final performance was live-streamed online.
The video of the live stream of Fagin remains available for viewing at the following link: https://www.youthmusictheatreuk.org/FAGINLiveStream
Christopher Wiley
Not the End of the World – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Review
Gulliver’s Travels – Lyric Theatre, Belfast – Review
Sweat Factory – A Contemporary Opera – Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells – Review
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.