Skip to main content

To Kill A Mockingbird

Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Four stars
Whatever the facts behind this week's announcement that novelist Harper Lee is set to publish Go Set a Watchman, a novel presumed lost for fifty-five years and featuring a grown-up version of Scout Finch, the narrator of her much-loved debut, there is no better time to stage To Kill A Mockingbird. Especially when it is such a poignantly evocative take on Lee's story as it is here in Timothy Sheader's touring production, which visits Edinburgh and Aberdeen following this week's Glasgow run of a piece originally produced by the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London.

It opens with twelve actors lining the stage wearing modern dress, reading the opening pages of Lee's novel in their own accents from the books held open before them. As each steps in and out of character, lining either side of Jon Bausor's wide-open set throughout as Luke Potter plays his live acoustic guitar score, this opens out Lee's treatise on tolerance and justice using her own rich words alongside Christopher Sergel's sturdy adaptation. It also conjures up a 1920s deep south community damaged by poverty, prejudice and a culture of blame, as Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill witness the trial of innocent young black man Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman.

At the play's moral centre is Scout's lawyer father Atticus, played with quiet compassion by Daniel Betts. There are similarly exquisite performances throughout, with three astonishing turns from Ava Potter, Arthur Franks and Connor Brundish, one of three teams of children playing the leads in a heart-rending and unmissable plea for justice in a cruel world.

The Herald, February 5th 2015

ends






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Honourable K.W. Harman: Ltd Ink Corporation

31 Bath Road, Leith Docks, March 17th-20th

In a monumental shipping container down by Leith Docks, a Sex Pistols tribute band is playing Anarchy in the U.K.. on a stage set up in the middle of the room. Either side, various constructions have been built in such a way so viewers can window shop as they promenade from one end of the room to the next, with the holy grail of a bar at either end.

Inbetween, there’s a confession booth and a mock-up of a private detective’s office with assorted documentation of real-life surveillance pinned to the walls. Two people seem to be having a conversation in public as if they're on a chat show. An assault course of smashed windows are perched on the floor like collateral damage of post-chucking out time target practice. A display of distinctively lettered signs originally created by a homeless man in search of a bed for the night are clumped together on placards that seem to be marking out territory or else finding comfort in being together. Opp…
Post a Comment
Read more

Scot:Lands 2017

Edinburgh's Hogmanay
Four stars

A sense of place is everything in Scot:Lands. Half the experience of Edinburgh's Hogmanay's now annual tour of the country's diverse array of cultures seen over nine bespoke stages in one global village is the physical journey itself. Scot:Lands too is about how that sense of place interacts with the people who are inspired inspired by that place.

So it was in Nether:Land, where you could see the day in at the Scottish Storytelling Centre with a mixed bag of traditional storytellers and contemporary performance poets such as Jenny Lindsay. The queues beside the Centre's cafe were further enlivened by the gentlest of ceilidhs was ushered in by Mairi Campbell and her band.

For Wig:Land, the grandiloquence of the little seen Signet Library in Parliament Square was transformed into a mini version of the Wigtown Book Festival. While upstairs provided a pop-up performance space where writers including Jessica Fox and Debi Gliori read eithe…
Post a Comment
Read more

Nomanslanding

Tramway, Glasgow until July 2nd
Four stars

In the dead of night, the audience are split in two and led under-cover into lamp-lit tented structures. Inside, what look like peasant women on the run lead us down a ramp and into a large circular pod. It feels part cathedral, part space-ship, and to come blinking into the light of such a fantastical structure after stumbling in the dark disorientates and overwhelms. Sat around the pod as if awaiting prayers to begin, we watch as performers Nerea Bello and Judith Williams incant mournfully on either side of the room. Their keening chorales embark on a voyage of their own, twisting around each other by way of the international language of singing. As if in sympathy, the walls wail and whisper, before starting to move as those on either side of the pod are left stranded, a gulf between them.

This international co-commission between Glasgow Life and the Merchant City Festival, Sydney Harbour Foreshaw Authority in Australia and Urbane Kienste …
Post a Comment
Read more