THE Oscar success for Boublil and Schonberg’s Les Miserables is serendipitous for York Stage Musicals, whose production of another B&S musical, Miss Saigon, could not be better timed.

Director Robert Readman delayed the opening from Friday night to the next day, ensuring his young cast was ready to the max for the School Edition’s York premiere after a final week of rehearsals disrupted by drama school auditions and train journey problems.

His decision was amply justified: the company hits the ground running in this intense Boublil and Schonberg musical, which mirrors Les Mis in being an unbroken series of songs.

For “intense”, B & S non-believers would substitute “histrionic” or “over the top”, maybe even “emotionally manipulative”, but musicals have always heightened emotions through song. Boublil & Schonberg just crank up all that emotional pressure a notch further, their epic shows acquiring an unstoppable momentum till the tears spill.

It is a demanding form of singing, particularly for voices still in development, as is the case with Readman’s cast, but how well they respond to that challenge aboard the musical accompaniment of musical director Adam Tomlinson’s impressive orchestra.

Built, like Les Miserables, around misunderstandings between individuals from contrasting cultures, Miss Saigon opens in a Saigon club in 1975, where the scantily-clad girls are at the beck and call of American GIs.

Village girl Kim (Lauren Sheriston), orphaned as her home is raised to the ground, is the new girl that captures the heart of GI Chris (George Stagnell), in the manner of Romeo’s first glance of Juliet. As in Shakespeare’s play, you instinctively know it will not end happily.

Sheriston, only 15 and already an Emmerdale cast member, and Stagnell, 18 and surely destined for drama school, both give terrific performances, culminating in their heart-rending finale.

Ben Williams impresses too as Chris’s upstanding best friend, GI John, while Stephanie Bolsher, as Ellen, Chris’s American wife, has less time on stage but sings especially well.

The very best performance, however, is by Joe Douglass as slippery-as-an-eel club boss The Engineer, a slick, cynical amalgam of Iago and the Emcee in Cabaret. Take a bow too Ashley Woellner for understudying the ill Jed Berry as Thuy, the most difficult role to sing. Berry has now returned but Woellner’s exertions are typical of Readman’s uniformly committed cast.

  • Miss Saigon School Edition, York Stage Musicals Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk