Gogol's 'The Portrait'

Gaze upon this production, oh Fringe veterans, and weep. Because a group of teenagers from Newbury have taken a 19^th century Russian parable and act, stage, and sing like it is the only play in the world. Newbury Youth Theatre (NYT) have made Nikolai Gogol's deliciously nasty short story vital using nothing but youthful zest and paper mache.

Set in a drab suburb of St Petersburg, a place where “the future doesn't visit”, The Portrait concerns a picture that seeps evil and misfortune like a cracked nuclear reactor. It is the image of a local moneylender, a man who gave out cash freely, but death and madness stalk those that took it.

When a portraitist captures this inky-eyed creature on canvas, part of his malevolence is locked within its frame. Like the moneylender's cash, the portrait bewitches its owners but ultimately destroys them.

It is an age old parable about money's corrupting influence, with an added Faustian twist. And NYT have twisted it further. They have accentuated its black humour and compiled songs (the closing sequence 'The Devil Changes Hands' depicts the portraits carnage across continents and decades, is particularly brilliant), which keeps the action at a canter.

As you would expect, with more than a dozen actors on stage the standard of performance is variable, but the vast majority of these teenagers are excellent.

A portrait gallery set-up on stage is used inventively throughout in a production that oozes fun as equally as the portrait itself oozes evil.