The Ragged Child – National Youth Music Theatre

The Ragged Child was performed by the National Youth Music Theatre at the Rose Theatre, Kingston and continues until 27 July.

Whether there were any Jude Laws or Jonny Lee Millers in the latest edition of The Ragged Child we shall have to wait and see, but this NYMT flag-bearer received an enthusiastic, worthy and full-of-promise performance in Kingston, once a Surrey town and these days a London borough, where it all started 28 years ago.

Law and Miller, now international stage and film stars, cut their teeth on this musical play when they joined the NYMT and both sing on the 1988 Sadler’s Wells cast recording.

The Ragged Child story began two years before that at Kingston’s Tiffin School with music written by Tiffin’s music master David Nield and story/lyrics compiled by their then head of drama Frank Whately in conjunction with NYMT founder Jeremy James Taylor.

This story of the mistreatment of the young vagrants who roamed the London streets in the mid-19th century and the creation of the Ragged Schools’ Bootblack Brigade for them to earn an honest crust has since gone round the world, from Kingston to Bergen and on to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, London, New York and Toronto, and was the first visiting production to play Glyndebourne in 1999.

Taylor, NYMT artistic director for 28 years until 2004 and awarded the OBE in 2010 for his youth work, returned to oversee the current production which gives acting opportunities to a huge cast of 48 from all over the UK, backed by six talented young musicians.

I suspect the opening night of this sprawling 29-scene epic did not go entirely to plan as it started 25 minutes late and the interval was a fair bit longer than the advertised 20 minutes.

The piece is a bit too much like a schoolmasterly history lesson for my taste, with not enough dramatic impact until the unexpected ending. The team songs are impressively well-rehearsed, but we could have done with more ballads like ‘There’ll Come a Day’, movingly performed by 12-year-old Hayley Canham from Holyport as consumptive little Annie Cooper.

It is not easy bringing humour to such a serious subject but ‘The Banquet’, with some lively overacting by the toffs, is highly amusing, and there is some lusty ensemble singing in ‘The Voyage’, superbly choreographed by Matthew Hawksworth.

But Annie’s is the only female part that is properly fleshed out and the boys have all the best-written roles. James Sterling catches the eye as the crippled cobbler John Giles, William Carey is a strong Rob Roy McGregor, 14-year-old Oscar Morgan, as Annie’s brother Joe whose past comes back to kick him in the teeth, shows much promise, and 19-year-old James Gulliford, as the young Lord Shaftesbury, shows the looks, voice and stage presence that Jude Law must have brought to the part all those years ago.

Musical direction is in the hands of Nicholas Chave and the very busy set, with multiple scene changes, keeps designer Christopher Richardson fully occupied in a massive team that receives an A-plus for effort.

Jeremy Chapman