Theatre night:To Kill A Mockingbird

I'd read, or been forced to read, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as a schoolboy in the early eighties. Unlike most of the books the teachers foisted upon us (Cider With Rosie, My Family And Other Animals) I loved it but, in the last forty years, I'd not returned to it and neither did I read Lee's semi-sequel to it, Go Set A Watchman, which came out a year before her death in 2016.

I'd remembered the themes of racism, justice, and rites of passage but I'm pretty sure the version I saw, unlike Aaron Sorkin's version at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, didn't contain quite so many n-words. That surely would have been unacceptable in the eighties, even at my school.

Perhaps they gave us a children's version of the book. Who knows? Though the language is quite discomfiting it is, you'd think, pretty accurate for its time and location. My mother briefly lived in Alabama after World War II (my biological grandfather on my mum's side comes from there) and she has certainly said as much.

To Kill A Mockingbird is set a decade earlier than my mum's brief tenure in the state and it tells the story of Atticus Finch (Rafe Spall, talking ninety to the dozen - and dressed pretty dapper), a lawyer who has been called on to defend Tom Robinson (Jude Owusu), a black man who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell (Poppy Lee Friar).

In the 1930s Deep South, it seems likely that, if you're black, to be accused is to be guilty and Mayella's father Bob Ewell (Patrick O'Kane) is dead set on not just securing Robinson's conviction but in lynching him too. As Atticus Finch is defending Robinson, he too becomes a potential victim of Ewell and his KKK thugs.

Giving the story a different dimension, we hear it told via the testimony of Atticus's children. Six year old Scout (Gwyneth Keyworth) and her nine year old brother Jem (Harry Redding). Seemingly to add some humour, initially, to the mix, their friend Dill (an excellent David Moorst) is thrown into the mix. Plus there's the reclusive Boo Radley (Harry Attwell) and the Finch's black housekeeper Calpurnia (Pamela Nomvete).

Calpurnia's not shy in pointing out Atticus's own prejudices and this gives elements of the story a moral ambiguity as it wends and weaves its way towards its inevitable courtroom finale. It's a long play, nearly three hours, but I was never once bored. Each individual performance was excellent and though I've already singled out Spall and Moorst for praise I should also take time to credit O'Kane for so realistically portraying the villain of the piece and to Poppy Lee Friar who has been on an absolutely outstanding run of performances recently (My Name Is Leon, Life And Death In The Warehouse, and In My Skin and that's just the ones I've seen).

It was good to be in a big ol' West End theatre again and it was good to be reacquainted with Harper Lee's masterpiece but it was sad to think that this tale, one that should be ancient history, now seems as relevant as ever. Perhaps that's why Sorkin revived it. Either way we all need to be a bit more like Atticus Finch and a bit less like Bob Ewell. Perhaps, even more so, we need to rediscover the innocence of Jem, Scout, and Dill and make friends with the Boo Radleys of this world.