Musical «Không Gia Đình» (Nobody's Boy / Sans Famille)

   An orphan sold to a travelling circus, a poor but decent old showman, a dog called Capi and a monkey called Joli-Cœur — the journey is retold on stage through live singing and dance, and it runs ninety minutes without an interval.

   The show is adapted from «Sans Famille» by the French novelist Hector Malot, first published in 1878 and a fixture of childhood reading ever since. This is the first time the novel has been staged as a musical by the Vietnam Youth Theatre.

   What the production is built on:

• — Director Merited Artist Lê Ánh Tuyết, whose «Trại hoa vàng» took the Gold Medal at the 2021 national song-and-dance festival, alongside «Bầy chim thiên nga» and «Giấc mơ của Bờm»
• — Writer Bùi Hồng Quế compressed the novel to 90 minutes while keeping the road-story shape intact
• — The score reworks classical pieces, with Vietnamese lyrics by Trần Thế Cường, Merited Artist Nguyễn Hải Yến and Nguyễn Tuấn Nghĩa
• — Designer Đặng Minh Tuấn built a nineteenth-century French countryside; the young cast sing, act and dance in the same breath

   It suits children who have read the book or are about to, and parents who grew up with Rémi. The story does not hide the hunger, the cold or the partings, but it keeps one answer in view: keep going and you will find the light.

   Two performances in this run — the evening of 20 September and the afternoon of 27 September. The show is in Vietnamese; most of the story is carried by songs and choreography, so children without the language still follow the plot.

   An evening out for the whole family, in a hall in the middle of Hanoi.