The Lost Boy, St Asaph Parish Church, North Wales International Music Festival (Fringe) – in collaboration with JAM on the Marsh | 11 September 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by David Gray & Paul Gray

The Lost Boy

St Asaph Parish Church, North Wales International Music Festival (Fringe) – in collaboration with JAM on the Marsh - St Asaph | 11 September 2026, then Brunel Museum, Tunnel Shaft, London |18 September 2026 & St Georges, Ivychurch, Kent | 19 September 2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by David Gray & Paul Gray

“A powerful and compelling new opera.”

Loss is very much at the heart of this new and compelling piece of music theatre by composer, Jago Thornton and librettist, Anastasia Bruce-Jones.

The protagonist, Harrison, is not only physically lost at the start of the story but also emotionally lost through events told in flashback. He faces the choice of losing his mother, or his lover. As we discover, he has already lost his father.

The lover, John, and Harrison’s mother, Mary, must deal with the loss of not just their beloved Harrison, but also with their own individual losses: Mary, her place in the community; John, his whole future.

This is a lot of emotional weight to pack into an opera that lasts all but an hour, but somehow Thornton and Bruce-Jones manage it. The libretto is beautifully poetic, concise and economical. It largely eschews flights of lyrical expression in favour of punchy but pregnant images, often consisting of only a few words.

This works very well. The characters are very ordinary people. If the language of love of the two teenage boys is at times a little clichéd, this is as it should be. They are, after all, teenage boys who feel everything with a naïve certainty, simplicity, and clarity.

It is left to the music to give heft and scale to the large and weighty emotions being experienced by the three characters. Thornton’s score makes the most of small forces: a harp, a ‘cello, and an unobtrusive (superb) electro-acoustic soundscape. Instrumentalists, Wallis Power and Olivia Jageurs are technically impressive and deal admirably with the significant challenges Thornton sets them: and this is not easy music.

Indeed, the musical language is highly original and profoundly beautiful: it is gorgeously fluid, imaginative, always lyrical, and grows organically out of the characters’ emotional lives. The overall structure of the work is convincing. Emotional intensity builds throughout to a devastating climactic trio, where Harrison is torn between his feelings for the two other characters.  

On approaching the final, tragic end of the opera, the device of telling the story in flashback enables the composer to return to where the music of the whole began. There is then a brief musical and dramatic coda where Mary and John reconcile - as best as they can - with their loss of Harrison and of one another.

A simple but richly textured set by Ian Kerr enables the action to flow. Collin Shay as Harrison, Jonathan Eyers as John, and Patricia Auchterlonie are all dramatically convincing, emotionally committed, and vocally and musically impressive. Auchterlonie could do with more attention to diction. A lot of her words get lost, and this is such a shame considering the great poetic beauty of Anastasia Bruce-Jones’s libretto.

But, beyond this quibble, The Lost Boy is an emotionally powerful, compelling and engrossing piece of total theatre. This brilliant young composer, Jago Thornton, really is a rising talent to watch.

Jago Thornton – Composer & Musical Director

Anastasia Bruce-Jones – Librettist & Director

Ian Kerr – Production Designer

Patricia Auchterlonie – Soprano/Mary

Collin Shay – Countertenor/Harrison

Jonathan Eyers – Baritone/John

Wallis Power – ‘Cello

Olivia Jageurs - Harp