There's about to be a hanging at Tokyo's Hibiya High School -- and the auditorium is packed with students who've come to see it.
The call to watch a hanging is the powerful opening scene of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" -- as staged by The International Theatre Company London and currently touring schools across Japan.
ITCL uses a cast of just five to dramatize the tale of Oliver Twist, an unfortunate waif who grows up in a Victorian workhouse and escapes it only to fall in with a band of thieves. Unlike Dickens' novel, the troupe tells the story through the eyes of Fagin, who, in the play's finale, is hanged for being the leader of this gang of petty robbers.