Oliver Tvist

The play went well, with more energy in the first performance on Wednesday, and I hope the kids are proud of themselves. They said their lines better than ever before. The script was not written in such a way that anyone can say it naturally - “imagine I am one of those wealthy old gentlemen who wander around Clerkenwell square peering into the shop windows.” Pretend you’re a fourth-year third language learner and you have to say that in front of your school. So we’re all proud of the students and a bit tired of ol’ Dickens, after many many rehearsals.

Rehearsals were a scream, though. The kids are so funny. A couple of them are great at improvisation and Svetlana is good at adapting things to be do-able. Zhopar Aizhan painted the boards we somewhat tenuously set up as scenery. They were liable to fall, but never really did. The boy who plays Oliver, had several scenes with group hugs (they’re popular here. Everything, even things that aren’t hugs, like looking at photos, become group hugs) developed a habit of not letting go. The actors would run into each other’s arms, with Olivers’ on the outside, and hug for 2 . . . 3. . . .4 . . .5 . . . 6 seconds. We could see the others starting to struggle, but they had to go offstage attached a couple times, like a spider with several heads. During setup, the tallest boy wandered around with a refrigerator box over his head. He would come up behind people and envelop them, trying to engage in conversation. One of them was always in various stages of having his photo taken (tilting his hat to the coolest possible angle, loosening his tie, asking me for my camera, asking me to take a photo of him posing like Eminem, looking at the photo saying it’s very good and asking for another.) And an eighth grader was the Littlest Policemen in the play and the Biggest Chimp in real life. He’s amazing at Frisbee and very easily entertained. The other eighth grader would start break dancing when he got bored.

The girls, in subtler ways, were pretty funny, too. The girl who played Sikes walked around with a ‘tude. Which is not at all her normal demeanor. Something about a fake gun and a costume. One of the girls’ lines: “Watch how you handle me, my man. I’m an Englishman as much as you [true dat],” became a mantra. And there was the student who would wink at me fom onstage.

Everyone wanted to dress as a gangster, even the characters who were supposed to be squeaky clean. About 75% of the characters appeared on stage with sunglasses, whether or not it had been okayed by Svetlana. One surprise appearance was made my venerable sunglasses.

They choreographed a fistfight in a scene where one was sorely lacking, and about four short chases, only when called for, of course. Svetlana suggested that in the last scene the characters do a victory dance and chose “Keep on the Sunny Side,” which was replaced, last minute, by a popular song (American) about some guy who’s telling the girl he’s cheating with to consider the feelings of his girlfriend [“this can’t be right, but it doesn’t feel so wrong . . .”]. Sandugash tried to show Zhopar how to dance “modern,” which involves a lot of stomping, apparently. But onstage, they decided not to go Soul Train and were just silly, with Elmira (the other one) swinging her braid like a lasso, and two of the others doing a kind of square-dance/London bridge maneuver which was overwhelmingly popular with the audience. Cultural note: audiences, when pleased, begin to clap in unison.

I took a video with Svetlana’s camera, but it was a failure, since my hand was shaking and as I got tired, the picture would get lower and lower until I only had waist-down of the actors, and then I’d snap out of it and jerk it back up to proper height. And Zhopar kept whispering to me. A student took photos with my camera, which turned out a bit fuzzily. So, for the sake of posterity, the second performance on Thursday afternoon was a good thing. However, since it wasn’t announced until Thursday morning, it was not very, um, convenient. But my students are rock stars and they did quite well.