Review of Kes at The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre
Kes at Jack Studio Theatre Back in my school days, I, along with everyone else had to read a book called ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ by Barry Hines. At the time, I thought it was an okay book, but I didn’t really think too much about it. The book was made into a film by Ken Loach in 1969 and finally a play by Robert Alan Evans which is currently being presented at the Jack Studio Theatre in Brockley. A middle-aged man (Rob Pomfret) is troubled. images, sounds and memories are racing through his mind, taking him back to his childhood, in a northern mining town in the late 1960s. We travel back in time with him to a milestone day in his younger life when he was plain Billy Casper (Simon Stallard) a fifteen-year-old boy from a working-class home, with a brother down the mines, a flighty mother and an absent father. By any standards, Billy’s life is pretty bleak. School is horrendous for the young lad, and there is little to look forward to when he leaves and faces a future, like so many ...