"Oliver! The Musical" comes to the Village Theater

Fifty performers hustled for three months to make "Oliver! The Musical" a success.

The musical is the retelling of Charles Dickens' novel, "Oliver Twist," a story about a London orphan in the 19th century. It will be performed from May 15-20 at the Village Theater, located on 50400 Cherry Hill Road in Canton.

"Oliver! The Musical" is being produced by Forever After Productions, a youth theater company in Canton that was established in 2003.  The youngest performer in the musical is six-years-old and the oldest is 22.

Artistic director and choreographer for the production, Debby Ash, who has been involved with Forever After Productions since 2006, said that they did auditions for the "Oliver! The Musical"  in February and that she is proud at how much the cast has grown.

"It's a fabulous show with an amazing set and wonderful costumes with an outstanding cast," Ash said. 

The show will feature high energy dance numbers and classic songs including "Pick-a-pocket," "Where is Love" and "As Long As He Needs Me."

Daniel Bischoff, a seventh grader of Spiritus Sanctus Academy, will be the lead role of Oliver. Bischoff has had previous experience performing, but this will be his first feature role.  

The cast rehearsed three to four times a week, lasting anywhere between two to nine hours.

Aleksander Papanastasopoulos, a sophomore at Divine Child High School and will play the role of Fagin, said that although rehearsals are time consuming, the program emphasis the importance of school as well.

"Their motto here is school comes first," Papanastasopoulos said. "If you have a school event, they will let you leave early, even during tech week."

Papanastasopoulos said that, in his four years of performing, this is the most talented cast yet.

"There is a lot of talented kids. I have never seen a youth theater program that has been able to get the kids with this level of talent," Papanastasopoulos said.

In addition to the 50 actors, 25 volunteers are participating on the technical crew. Their responsibilities include building sets, organizing costumes and applying make-up.

Jeannie Papanastasopoulos, lead volunteer coordinator for the production, said that parents are required to do a certain amount of hours doing technical work.

"It's a family event. It's not just drop your kid off and have them rehearse,"  Papanastasopoulos said. "It's the parents that are building the sets and spending time away from the rest of their family. It's really a commitment of the whole family."

Norma Polk, lead set designer, said she started building the set a month ago and loves teaching parents and the cast building skills.

"I wanted the audience to be transported to London in the Dickens' era," Polk said. "I did research on what the culture was like to help the story come to life."

Ash said that the best part of working with Forever After Productions is to see the kids develop into adults.

"We get to see our kids grow from toddlers in our camp programs," Ash said. "A lot of our kids have gone on to attend performance arts school all over the country and to have performing art careers."