Twist

A pop-rock musical based on Oliver Twist, with a Drama Desk 2007-nominated score.

By turns outrageous, provocative, and emotionally riveting, Twist weaves Victorian erotica, dark comedy and gender-bending into Dickens’s famous tale as it re-imagines Oliver as an attractive young man, still searching for love, but driven by physical desire. Whether submitting to punishment at the Workhouse, or succumbing to the charms of a flirtatious Artful Dodger, Twist is always begging for more. Set in London’s late 1800s, Twist’s journeys land him in underworld household of prostitutes and pickpockets, ruled over by Fagin, a stunning male dominatrix with a nasty temper.

A unique retelling of a classic, Twist, entertains with exquisite drag, arch wit, a bit of kink and a catchy set of new contemporary songs. Yet the show remains surprisingly true to Oliver Twist, a coming-of-age tale of loneliness, craving, adventure, and finally, redemption. First performed in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in the fall of 2006, the show went on to New York workshops at the Kraine Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Source. For the MITF production, the author and composers have added new material, expanding on a score that has already been called “instantly memorable”.

Book & lyrics Gila Sand
Music by Paul Leschen
Additional music by Gila Sand & Garrit Guadan
Directed by Gila Sand
Presented as part of The Eighth Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival.