A sparrowhawk for a priest. A kestrel for a knave. Young Billy Casper is certainly a bit of a knave, a problem child in a problem family living on a problem estate in Yorkshire some time in the 1960s, when a life spent in the dark down the pit was the best you could hope for if, like Billy, you are going to leave school with no qualifications and no apparent talents. Only Billy does have a talent and a passion. He has trained a young kestrel, and his relationship with this beautiful, wild, fierce bird is his one joy in a life filled with the bullying of his elder brother, the indifference of his young mother and the tedium of school.
Anyone who worries how much school fails some of our children now may be surprised to see how much more we failed them 40 years ago. Billy's school is positively Dickensian in its headmaster's reliance on corporal punishment and its cowed teachers. Even the teacher who takes an interest in Billy's kestrel seems entirely unable to help him escape the brutality of the world around him. You know that at best Billy will be crushed by pit life and at worst he will eventually turn into a version of his swaggering, beer-swilling elder brother.
This is a fine choice for the National Youth Theatre, as it gets into the heart and mind of a teenager and requires a large cast to give a convincing sense of time and place. John Hoggarth's production does both these things very well indeed, cleverly turning classroom desks and a blackboard into the craggy moors and ensuring that we see every single child for the individual that he or she is. The scene where the English teacher gets the children to draw upon their memories is as powerfully moving a testament to the transforming possibilities of storytelling as you will ever see and a sign of the untapped talents of these kids who have been written off before they have even started.
The studied naturalism of the show sometimes seems a little clumsy, and the production needs much more pace, but there are no indifferent performances and plenty of very good ones. There is something rather heartwarming, too, about watching these talented, fresh-faced youngsters expending their energy on a story about those with far bleaker futures.
· Until September 13. Box office: 08700 500 511.
