I was expecting a lot. This wasn’t just any old story. This was my teenage love. This was the book that my dad had given me for my thirteenth birthday and the reason I went to law school. So, yes, my expectations on heading to the stage production of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ touring at the Theatre Royal were rather high.
The performance was an aesthetically-pleasing production that will have an army of English teachers rounding up their student-troops on coaches all around the country. It was an unapologetically avant-garde attempt to portray a classic story – of which the audience were continually reminded of as the storytellers read to us aloud from various book-versions of the tale. ‘This Is Us Recreating A Well-Loved story’, they seemed to say, as we were walked through key scenes.
The set, complete with tree-swing and evolving chalk drawings, was a wonder to watch and helped the audience to see the story through Scout’s young eyes. Southern-accents and a grasshopper soundscape helped transported the audience to the States (but it was slightly unnerving to hear the actors then slip into their UK accents for storytelling).
Little Ava Potter did a phenomenal job of portraying Scout, while Atticus Finch was cast as an anti-hero through subtle but strong acting. He was, as expected, a moral compass of the first degree but perhaps the audience felt a tad morally-overdosed by the repeated ‘life lesson’ lines delivered in each scene?
The audience could probably have done with a higher suspense-to-storytelling ratio, and the predictability we had come to expect from the first act did not have us dashing to our seats after the interval (but how many risks would have been acceptable with such a well-loved tale?). The second-act-long court-scene managed to stir-up the appropriate dose of emotions but to see a hysterical woman cry rape dramatised was rather jarring with modern feminist ideals.
It was reminder of the still-relevant themes of injustice that Harper Lee conveys so well in her work, and allowed reflection the ways in which society has moved on the distressing and depressing racism of eras past. But ultimately his portrayal felt a little patronising: I am no longer a 13-yearold girl but an independent adult going to the theatre, without the of an need Atticus Finch figure to hold my hand.
(First published as part of the Glasgow Women's Library Young Critics)
The performance was an aesthetically-pleasing production that will have an army of English teachers rounding up their student-troops on coaches all around the country. It was an unapologetically avant-garde attempt to portray a classic story – of which the audience were continually reminded of as the storytellers read to us aloud from various book-versions of the tale. ‘This Is Us Recreating A Well-Loved story’, they seemed to say, as we were walked through key scenes.
The set, complete with tree-swing and evolving chalk drawings, was a wonder to watch and helped the audience to see the story through Scout’s young eyes. Southern-accents and a grasshopper soundscape helped transported the audience to the States (but it was slightly unnerving to hear the actors then slip into their UK accents for storytelling).
Little Ava Potter did a phenomenal job of portraying Scout, while Atticus Finch was cast as an anti-hero through subtle but strong acting. He was, as expected, a moral compass of the first degree but perhaps the audience felt a tad morally-overdosed by the repeated ‘life lesson’ lines delivered in each scene?
The audience could probably have done with a higher suspense-to-storytelling ratio, and the predictability we had come to expect from the first act did not have us dashing to our seats after the interval (but how many risks would have been acceptable with such a well-loved tale?). The second-act-long court-scene managed to stir-up the appropriate dose of emotions but to see a hysterical woman cry rape dramatised was rather jarring with modern feminist ideals.
It was reminder of the still-relevant themes of injustice that Harper Lee conveys so well in her work, and allowed reflection the ways in which society has moved on the distressing and depressing racism of eras past. But ultimately his portrayal felt a little patronising: I am no longer a 13-yearold girl but an independent adult going to the theatre, without the of an need Atticus Finch figure to hold my hand.
(First published as part of the Glasgow Women's Library Young Critics)