Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird is never far from the top in any poll of best-loved novels, a fact that Timothy Sheader's production references throughout with copies of the book ever present: All different shapes, sizes and covers reflecting how many editions there have been, the supporting cast sit at the sides when they're not playing a role, reading through the story that's unfolding on stage. It also turns them into a chorus, narrating the story of the Finch family of Alabama in 1935. Scout (Ava Potter at this performance, alternating with Jemima Bennett and Rosie Boore) and her older brother Jem (Tommy Rodger, alternating with Harry Bennett, Billy Price and Arthur Franks) lost their mother when they were very young and now live with their father Atticus and their cook Calpurnia (Susan Lawson-Reynolds.) This production originated at Regents Park, and for this Barbican revival Robert Sean Leonard returns to play Atticus, a lawyer putting his all into a case he knows he can't win in a still overtly-racist South: Tom Robinson (Zackary Momoh) is a black man accused of raping a white woman.
