KES. To 16 October.
Manchester
KES
by Barry Hines adapted by Lawrence Till
Royal Exchange Theatre To 16 October 2004
Mon-Frio 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wee 2.30pm Sat 4pm
Audio-described 2 Oct 4pm
After-show discussion 14 October
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 September
Energetic, moving and economical production of a novel that's been made entirely theatrical.Thanks to the strong images binding the dramatic flow and fluid use of the Exchange's in-the-Round stage neither Lawrence Till's adaptation nor Sarah Frankcom's production give any suggestion of origins in a novel, Barry Hines' story of a lonely teenager in a Yorkshire mining town c 1970 who finds fulfilment in training (but never taming) a female kestrel.
Till economically suggests several significant themes in the opening minutes, economically creating both family claustrophobia and the monotony of life when the future lies in a dead-end job in a community where nobody ever really knows anyone. They just get along, as does Billy's mother, two husbands down and any number of men to buy her drinks, with a body she can use to settle tradesmen's accounts. Yet she cannot help her son in his moment of devastation, peeling him away from her.
It's hardly surprising Billy is turned off this life. Andrew Carfield starts utterly detached in a school class where lack of a father at home, his mother's reputation and his poverty keeps him well down the pecking order. He can fall asleep standing up; he's physically and mentally turned away from lessons.
Carfield slowly shows Billy emerging as a personality, from the sullen, confused lad who steals a library book because filling-in library forms isn't for him (several pieces of official paper end screwed up and thrown down). Both his triumph with the bird and his final isolation, where he calls for his absent dad, suggest a new resourcefulness.
Thanks largely to English teacher Farthing (Roger Morlidge, individual and unstylish in cord suit and catching both scepticism and concern as he roams the classroom or listens to his pupils when their minds take flight). His lesson on fact and fiction leads via one pupil's account of an adventure with tadpoles (Philip McGinley showing there's more than one human light hidden within an impersonal education system) to the emergence of Billy's enthusiasm.
Scenes brief and long, large-cast or intimate are handled with confidence. The first half, especially, has a brisk, attention-grabbing energy as life surges around the alienated Billy. And Becky Hurst's set, moving from coal via wasteland to the short grass that survives among industry, quietly asserts the reality of events, which are finally given a supernal glow as Colin Grenfell's lighting illuminates this world with lamps as distant as Billy's dad.
Jud: William Beck
Billy Casper: Andrew Carfield
Mr Gryce/Porter: Ian Barritt
Mr Farthing/Milkman: Roger Morlidge
Mrs Casper: Jane Hazlegroe
Farmer/Youth Employment Officer/Mr Crossley: Kierran Cunningham
MacDowall: Steven Webb
Mr Sugden/Mr Beal: Gary Dunnington
Anderson: Philip McGinley
Delamore: Steven Bloomer
Tibbut: Thomas Morrison
Mrs MacDowall/Mrs Rose/Miss Fenton/Librarian: Fiona Clarke
Messenger/Pupil: Alan Neal
Pupils: Benjamin Boateng, Sam Grimwood, Sam Lindsay, Freddie Machin
Director: Sarah Frankcom
Designer: Becky Hurst
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Sound: Pete Rice
Music: Richard Atkinson
Dialect coach: William Conacher
Fights: Kate Waters
Assistant director: Cheryl Martin
2004-09-22 17:09:30