Powerful story proves a challenge

Kes, Mossley AODS, George Lawton Hall
IT’S been around for years, but Barry Hines’s emotionally-powerful story of a bullied boy, mostly indifferent teachers and family and the discovery of his own personal joy still packs a powerful punch.

This is a familiar story of teenage angst, made all the more poignant by its downbeat Yorkshire setting, its palpable sense of hopelessness and, at its centre, a young boy who at 15 has already been abandoned by almost all the people around him.

But fatherless Billy Casper, bullied by his older brother, unsupported by his mother and a loner at school, has his own reason for joy: the raising and training of a young kestrel, cast out like himself.

In scenes of interaction between the boy and the bird, or when Billy talks about his passion with schoolfriends and one caring teacher, he becomes animated and talkative, at last given respect.

The play is notoriously difficult to stage, partly thanks to the lack of stage-trained kestrels but mainly because as a play it relies on scenes of school realism hard to play even for experienced actors.

Mossley AODS gives us a fleeting glimpse of a kestrel hovering (on film), but mainly relies on mime and gesture and lets the audience fill in the gaps.

More problematic is the general milling around to no great purpose of Billy’s schoolmates who, when I saw the show (at a dress rehearsal on Monday) were still a little inhibited.

Early school day scenes in James Schofield’s production were also a little slow and lacked energy — though Iain Linsdell has certainly got the role of the domineering head teacher down to fear-instilling perfection. Ian Chatterton as kindly teacher Mr Farthing is a suitably sympathetic focus for the good teachers of this world, however.

I would have liked more unnecessary roughness from Richard Parker — a slightly too clean-cut Jud; though Tracey Rontree as their mother is as feckless as the character demands.

Admittedly I saw this before opening night and without an audience, and young Frank WIlliams as Billy was also still finding his feet.

Though word and position-perfect, he still needed to fully inhabit the role. Hopefully the week will prove me wrong. To Saturday.