To Kill a Mockingbird, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre - theatre review

Robert Sean Leonard provides a wonderfully rumpled humanity, delivering Atticus Finch’s summing-up speech with a terrific restrained power
Father figure: Robert Sean Leonard as morally-centred lawyer Atticus Finch
Alastair Muir
Fiona Mountford27 September 2014

Despite the unseasonal chill, the Open Air Theatre’s elegance proves a smart setting for Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of the Harper Lee perennial about American racial justice gone awry. The US flag silhouetted in the gloaming during the crucial courtroom scene provides just one of many arresting images.

Timothy Sheader’s playful production, with its town design based around a series of childlike chalk drawings on the floor, flares into life in a hugely affecting second half. Perhaps the cast, who are afflicted by some errant American accents, require the first to thaw out from the cold, although Jem and Scout, played with feistiness on opening night by Adam Scotland and Izzy Lee, are warm and mischievous from the start.

It’s asking a lot of any actor to step into the role of morally-centred lawyer Atticus Finch, immortalised in the 1962 film by Gregory Peck, but Robert Sean Leonard, best known for the TV series House, provides a wonderfully rumpled humanity. He delivers Atticus’s summing-up speech with a terrific restrained power; it’s easy to comprehend why, as a father, Atticus would inspire his children 80 per cent of the time and annoy them tremendously for the other 20.

Until June 15, 0844 826 4242, openairtheatre.com

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