KES To 28 November.
Tour.
KES
by Barry Hines adapted by Lawrence Till.
The Touring Consortium with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Tour to 28 November 2009.
Theatre Royal: Tkts 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk.
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
Performance times: 7.30pm (matinees 2.00pm Weds and Thurs and 2.30pm Sat).
Audio Described: Sat 2.30pm.
Review: Alan Geary 13 October at theatre Royal Nottingham.
You’d need a heart of sawdust not to be moved. Even so, there are weaknesses.
Like the Barry Hines novel on which it’s based, this play has a hefty emotional impact. Even so, there are weaknesses as well as strengths in this production from The Touring Consortium and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.
Stefan Butler is compelling as Billy. But, with those beetle brows and over-loud piercing voice, he often looks and sounds like a demented old man. You’d have thought one of his teachers would tell him off for constantly carrying a newspaper delivery-bag about, even when not on his paper-round. In the classroom he looks twice the size of the next largest kid, like a ruined hill.
His bullying brother, Jud (Oliver Farnworth), in coarse trousers with braces hanging down, and collarless shirt, is out of D H Lawrence rather than the late sixties.
In fiction, whenever a sympathetic, firm but fair, teacher is called for, it’s always the English teacher. Mr Farthing (David Crellin), who’s teaching some remarkably thin stuff to his fifteen-year-olds, is a cliché. So is Mr Gryce (Mike Burnside), albeit an amusing one. Like a headmaster out of the Beano, but not out of a real-life sink school, Gryce sports an academic gown. The chirpy milkman, in cap and little white jacket, carrying a milk crate by the handle, looks like Norman Wisdom in a fifties film.
Katherine Dow Blyton’s Mrs Casper is, however, depressingly realistic: it’s a splendid performance. Mrs C isn’t malicious; but when it comes to raising her offspring she’s clueless. There’s a whiff of the potential for incest in one scene with Jud.
Having a symbolic kestrel, which also functions as an alter-ego for Billy makes sense and works well; so do the bleak, partly-stylised set and very English-sounding, beautifully composed pastoral music.
The most effective images, the ones you’re left with at the end, are never seen; they’re repeatedly articulated by Billy: being woken by a proper mum and called down to a proper breakfast. Being carried on his dad’s shoulders from the pictures home to a warm house. The play is as much about Billy’s lost relationship with a father as with a kestrel.
Mr Gryce/Mr Porter: Mike Burnside.
Billy: Stefan Butler.
Mr Farthing: Daniel Casey.
Mr Sugden/Mr Beal: David Crellin.
Mrs Casper: Katherine Dow Blyton.
Jud: Oliver Farnworth.
Mr Crossley/Farmer/Youth Employment Officer: Dominic Gately.
Tibbut: Peter McGovern.
Mrs Macdowall/Mrs Rose/Librarian: Sue Vincent.
Macdowall: Oliver Watton.
Director: Nikolai Foster.
Designer: Matthew Wright.
Lighting: Guy Hoare.
Sound: Marcus Christensen.
Composer: David Shrubsole.
2009-10-16 12:01:44