Words by Heather Gibb
Performed as part of the Yorkshire Festival 2014, a cultural celebration marking the 100 days lead up to the Tour de France’s arrival in Yorkshire, Kes is a dance-theatre adaption of Barry Hines’ novel, A Kestrel for a Knave. Adaptor, director and choreographer Jonathan Watkins grew up with the novel and wanted to bring the story to life in a new, much more expressive way than the previous film adaptation and so chose to do away with words entirely and tell the story with movement, music and puppetry.
The story of Kes centres on schoolboy Billy Casper, growing up on a housing estate in Barnsley in the 1960s. To escape the tedium of school – where he’s bullied by both teachers and pupils – and his home life, with a brutish older brother and a mother who pays too much attention to other men and not enough to her sons, Billy finds a baby kestrel in a nest and takes it home to hand-rear it. Billy has found something to nurture and in doing so finds a freedom and joy he didn’t know existed. Set designer Ben Stones has created a unique and beautiful set which captures Yorkshire’s strange harmony between the industrial and the wild. A flying landscape of hilly grass hovers above the stage from between the proscenium arch, framed with metal scaffolding which hints at the mining industry Barnsley was built on, whilst a misty backdrop revealing silhouettes of chimneys and high-rise flats gives a great sense of never-ending depth. Talking about his design, Stones said, “We wanted to show that there is a landscape and beauty in Barnsley and the North, and that at the centre of our story, behind all the industry, is a fragile, living thing”. The stage itself is covered with scuffed, worn-out wood panel flooring – familiar to many as the standard school hall floor, setting the scene for where Billy spends most of his time.
When the play begins, the set reveals its hidden ingenuity as four performers walk steadily onstage from underneath the flying hills wheeling on a bed within a basic metal framework. This becomes Billy and his brother’s bedroom for the opening scene as they toss and turn under the covers. More of these frameworks hold the set pieces for the rest of Billy’s house and later the school classrooms, the working men’s club, the bookies’ shop and more. Each time they are wheeled out by members of the cast with a slow and deliberate walk so that even the scene changes become a part of the action and the audience’s attention is never lost.
The performers themselves are mesmerising, bringing each character, no matter how small, to life with endless energy and attention to detail. In a very short scene in which Billy searches for a book about kestrels in the library, he clashes with the librarian whose sharp, staccato movements and jabbing finger convey better than words that this is a woman possessive of her books and picky about who so much as touches them. Later, we see the mother and brother drinking with friends at the local working men’s club in a sequence of movement which grows steadily more exaggerated and seemingly out of control. The performers move in complete harmony, falling over each other and gesturing wildly, perfectly conveying the chaos which accompanies drunkenness. Rachael Canning, the show’s puppetry designer and director, manages to bring not only the kestrel to life but also uses sheets of newspaper in the hands of the performers to perfectly create a flock of birds in flight. As the dancers leap and twirl, the newspaper flaps and soars around the stage to the delight and awe of Billy and the audience.
Laura Careless is the puppeteer for most of the scenes between Kes and Billy, and manages to move the simple wire and feather structure with such conviction that the young bird seems genuinely wild and fearful when flapping about his cage. Alex Baranowski’s original score sets the pace and tone for each scene, blending so perfectly with the show as a whole that it is easy to forget it is there. It ticks like a clock in scenes of school boredom and frustration and then soars with Kes in flight to create truly uplifting and heartbreakingly beautiful moments. It also acts as a more straightforward storytelling device in a scene in which Billy and his brother are waiting to hear the result of a horse race as a radio broadcast commentary plays within the musical score.
Laura Caldow shone as the mother, captivating the audience with her solo dance pieces and seeming almost fluid when dancing with a partner. A moving sequence following a fight between her sons leaves Caldow restless, shifting between the house set pieces which, every time she pauses, begin to close in on her. The metaphor is clear as she becomes trapped by the framework, echoing the frantic flapping of Kes in his cage. That said, the whole cast is outstanding and there wasn’t a weak link to be found, proving that age is no boundary as the cast ranges from school age to middle aged.
There are too many ingenious, moving and beautiful moments to mention within this production and it is one I hope goes on to tour in the future as it is truly a sight to behold.
