Perth Theatre
Four stars
Pity poor Billy Casper,
the council estate urchin destined for the scrap-heap in Barry Hines’
inspirational 1960s novel about his remarkable empathy with a kestrel that
symbolises his own potential to fly high before his wings are clipped. Robert
Alan Evans’ two-actor stage version was originally commissioned by the
Catherine Wheels company, and Lu Kemp’s new production doesn’t pull any punches
in getting to the gritty heart of Billy’s life in a day in a depressed
Yorkshire mining town.
The bird he names Kes is
the only salvation from a bullying brother, a fly-by-night mother and a series
of sadistic school-teachers. All these and more are played by Matthew Barker,
who both interacts with and watches over Danny Hughes’ Billy with the faraway
melancholy of a northern soul’s future self, looking back at all the
what-might-have-beens.
It’s a heartbreakingly
realised study of crushed dreams and low expectations brought vividly to life
on Kenneth MacLeod’s bleak industrial set. As Billy scampers his way to
oblivion over a wild and breathless hour, the bird’s flight is magically evoked
by Lizzie Powell’s flickering lighting and Matt Padden’s richly textured sound
design.
Barker and Hughes avoid
sentimentalism in a series of brutal and brilliant exchanges that lay bare
Billy’s entire family as representatives of an underclass tethered to their lot
by poor education, near slum living and almost zero job prospects beyond a life
underground. In this sense, while the words and music on show betray the
story’s origins as a period piece, given the current state we’re in, the echoes
down the fifty years since Hines’ story first appeared ring uncomfortably
familiar.
Billy’s generation would
come of age in a world where the phrase ‘no future’ would take on a whole new
meaning. Yet by the end of the play, his destiny has already been defined in a
play where he might be thrown out with the rubbish, but, as the last scene
shows, may learn to fly yet.
The Herald, November 11th 2019
Ends
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