SCENE ONE. As the audience enter they see a scaffold and gallows on the stage. They are a crowd arriving for a public execution in 1840's London. Among them are a flower seller. She banters with the audience ? looking forward to the arrival of Fagin for hanging. FAGIN is dragged on and stripped of his distinctive costume, these along with his toasting fork are lain on the coffin awaiting Fagin's corpse after the hanging. FLOWER SELLER: Hang the Devil! Wicked Jew! Swing him! BROWNLOW: Wait! This wicked and evil dog, brought here by true justice, to this fatal tree, did in his lifetime hold an unnatural sway over the minds of young people. Including my dear Grandson here, Oliver Twist. Fagin, you have one last chance in your life. Use it! Speak to the young people here, speak to the poor citizens. Confess your evil crimes. Beg forgiveness from our Christian God above before it is too late. FAGIN: I will speak to these people but I have nothing to confess. It is not I should die here today, but him ? Lord Brownlow, if you please!! It is he, murderer and hypocrite, that led so many of us to an early death. Brownlow: This is outrageous!! This is preposterous!! Hang this wicked Jew!! Flower seller: Hang him! Hang him!! Fagin: Oh, you want a little entertainment, do you? You?ll laugh soon enough when I?m dangling on that rope!! Flower seller: Hang him! Hang him! Fagin: Wait!! If I am to die I have the right to speak!! So, listen!! It was ten years ago that HE committed HIS first crime ? ten years from that first savagery to this last ? ten years ago?. Since god was out of his heaven and Lucifer rode the winter clouds and rattled at the doors of Lord Brownlow and his doomed daughter Agnes? (OLIVER dresses as AGNES and she forms a tableau with her father - Brownlow - a SERVANT holds a portrait of AGNES aloft and MRS GRIMWIG, LORD BROWNLOW'S Housekeeper, hovers ready to open the door. The door is in fact the coffin which has been stood on its end. The scene is played at floor level watched by FAGIN. EXECUTIONER exits.). FAGIN: The story of? Oliver Twist! Scene 2 ©Paul Stebbings and Phil Smith 1994, 1996, 2001.