A feral Billy Casper doing blue-tit like acrobatics on a cross bar during a school football match.
Sadistic PE teacher, Mr Sugden, played by a red-faced and barking mad Brian Glover, who imagines he is Bobby Charlton and cheats. The brutality of the cold shower he makes Billy take.
And the bird, hovering on the wind above fields on the edge of a South Yorkshire pit village. Kes, the 1969 adaptation of Barry Hines novel, A Kestrel for a Knave, by Tony Garnett and Ken Loach is one of the greatest British films ever made, and the scenes have stayed with me for decades.
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It evoked beautifully how the hawk awakens the possibility in the 15-year-old stray that his world may contain more than a path to the toil and darkness of working in a mine. So, how can this be transferred to the stage with just three actors?
A Bolton Octagon production succeeds in retaining both the harsh power and intermittent, soaring, joy of the novel and film, and the accents are Barnsley-authentic. Jake Dunn plays an angry, abused, neglected Billy, with wide-eyed fear and wonder as it dawns on him that the kestrel is proof that there is an escape from "dirty grey people with a dirty grey life".
A stark stage - just ladders and an old radio, from which we assume seeps the faint sounds of 1960s music, including the voice of Dusty Springfield, is perfect for reflecting the bleakness of Billy's domestic life. Dunn injects, impressively, both energy and fragility in equal measure to his part.
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Bolton-born Harry Egan, plays "The Man", and the former Canon Slade Secondary School pupil is a tour-de-force.
He veers from manic to tender playing Billy's thuggish brother, Jud; head teacher, Mr Gryce; the kind teacher, Mr Farthing; Mrs Casper, and Mr Sugden.
His strutting monologue as Mr Sugden, in just his underpants, booming that "muscle is power" captured with unerring accuracy the insane macho posing of many 1960s and 70s PE teachers.
Nishla Smith's haunting, ethereal, voice is used sparsely. But the brevity and beauty of her singing interludes showers hope on the grim reality of Billy's working class life where abuse reigns at home and in school.
The play turns on Billy spending his brother's bet on a 100 to 6 horse on fish and chips. The horse wins and if the bet had been placed he would have won enough to have a week off from the pit.
His revenge is to kill the kestrel, which by stealing a book on falconry, Billy has trained and bonded with. The demise of the bird is described by Egan with unflinching detail - chucked in a bin with egg shells and rubbish.
Disney once wanted to buy the rights to Hines' novel - on condition he allowed the end to be changed, so the bird lived. He refused. The Octagon's version is bleak, as it should be, but hope shines through as The Man says, "When you think there's nothing left to live for you remember her".
Don’t miss
Kes runs at the Bolton Octagon until April 2.
The show is a co-production with Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. and will be staged there from Wed 6th to Sat 30 April : theatrebythelake.com - 01768 774411.
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