Sweet bird of youth

THE announcement of a second instalment of the classic To Kill a Mockingbird by reclusive novelist Harper Lee – Go Set a Watchman, due to be released on July 14 – has seen interest in a touring version of the original work soar and Newcastle Theatre Royal add an extra performance to its week-long April run.

Both Daniel Betts, who plays heroic lawyer Atticus Finch, and Gateshead actress Victoria Bewick, as the tragic and deluded Mayella Ewell, have both ordered copies to the new work by Lee, which has shot to number one in the book charts on pre-orders.

“I’m told that only two million copies of the new book are being released initially, so I would imagine that all those have already sold on pre-order. My name is definitely down,” says Bewick, who read To Kill a Mockingbird as a child.

“Nearly everybody you know has read a copy and it is a treasured memory. That’s why Tim (director Timothy Sheader) has a vision for the play where all the actors have a different cover and all of us read in our own accents, because he feels everyone takes away different things from it,” she says.

The difficult task for the actress is that her character falsely accuses black Tom Robinson of raping her in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb and we famously see the racist storyline through the eyes of Atticus’ six-year-old daughter Scout (a role shared by Jemima Bennett, Rosie Boore and Ava Potter).

“I have taken the view that Mayella is a victim of her circumstances and her ignorance because she’s been physically and sexually abused by her dad and Tom is the only man to show her any courtesy and she decides to tempt him and it all goes horribly wrong.

“She’s not as innocent as Tom, but if she had admitted what she’d done she’d have been just as dead as he ends up. Being attracted to a black man in 1933 to 1935 was as good as a death sentence in that town,” she says.

Bewick enjoys the fact that she uses her North-East voice initially before jumping into character as a Southern belle.

The adaptation involves three teams of children playing the roles of Scout, her older brother Jem and school friend Dil and Bewick feels that a burst of fresh young energy each week does help in the long touring run over nine months.

“Each audience will see slightly different versions,” she says.

Bewick is from the Whickham area of Gateshead and is a recent graduate from the Manchester School of Theatre. “I was always interested in drama at school and got involved in the National Youth Theatre connections festivals where schools chose to do one of ten new plays. My group got through to the final and I performed at Newcastle Theatre Royal and the National Theatre. At 17, I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do. I’d applied to do French and missed the boat at drama school and I took a year out instead to save up for drama school.

“I was warned it was an insecure lifestyle, but then the benefits of doing something I love outweigh and I know I did the right thing.”

She’s already appeared in films Dark Shadows and The Iron Lady, but her appearance in TV’s popular Call The Midwife has put her in front of millions.

“I was lucky enough to be in the Christmas special and I played a young mother who had got pregnant by an ex-soldier suffering post-traumatic stress. He was having anxiety antics because of the blood he’d seen and it was decided by the medical staff to allow him to be present at the birth so that the blood of the baby would show him that it also means new life,” says Bewick.

It doesn’t look the most pleasant of experiences in pretending to give birth on TV and the actress says: “We do have an experienced midwife who talks you through the whole process and at what points you’d be in pain. My first rehearsal was awful because I was really going for it and the next morning I woke up with blood blisters down the side of my face because I’d been straining so hard.”

‘I DO feel Gregory Peck looking over my shoulder,” says Daniel Betts about the 1962 film version which ensures that generations have an Atticus Finch as a model of integrity for the legal profession.

“Once I got the part I panicked and read the book and said, ‘Oh no, what have I done, what have I taken on',” says Betts. “The best bit is getting the job and then the reality sinks in over this dark, bleak period of self-doubt that lasts for six months. Then, eventually you come up for air and realise that the role is wonderful.

“All I was thinking about at one time was the spectre of Gregory Peck. It is a nightmare, but we should be used to it. If you took the view that Sir John Gielgud gave the definitive performance of Hamlet in 1936, then nobody else need bother. But everyone gives it a go, which is wonderful.

“That’s what you have to say to yourself. I’m not going to be Gregory Peck. I can only do my version and I’ve tried to keep my mind as uncluttered as possible concerning reviews and the film and see what the book suggests to me,” he says.

His other tours have included Dial M for Murder and The Winter’s Tale for the Royal Shakespeare company. TV includes Crimson Fields, Criminal Justice, Law and Order, Silent Witness, Murphy's Law, Time of Your Life and A Touch of Frost. Betts can also be seen in wartime movie Fury and Tom's Midnight Garden.

The release of the new book, which features Atticus as much older, prompts Betts to wonder how many other versions of To Kill a Mockingbird are touring.

“I think we’re the only one in the UK, but I wonder how many are touring in the US where it’s done a lot, in addition to an annual performance in Monroeville, Alabama (home to author Harper Lee).

“Go Set a Watchman has certainly sent a shockwave through our troupe because it’s fascinating how some literary news has had such international coverage. This is quite unique and involves what is probably America’s nation novel,” he says.

Betts says that the Harper Lee estate ensures that only authorised verions of the 1990 play by Christopher Sergel are staged.

“I don’t think Harper Lee has given permission for the play to be done on Broadway or in the West End. Our production differs to many others because we use children rather than teenage actors. I understand that because you’re faced with hiring chaperones and guidelines on performance times and kids can get tired.

“But, I can say that the children found by the Regent’s Park Theatre Company are quite extraordinary. For most of the first half, they carry the play, and that’s a hell of a responsibility for a little kid,” he says.

On the US accents used in Mockingbird, Betts says a talkback after one show was attended by a lawyer from Alabama.

“He was an old boy who told us our accents were all wrong. I told him that if we’d done a legitimate accent then no one would understand a word we said because the tone is so laidback and such a drawl. It screams that I cannot use much energy to speak because I’m dying of heat.”

* Runs West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. March 24 to April 4. Box Office: wyp.org.uk or 0113-213-7700

* Newcastle Theatre Royal, April 20 to 25, theatreroyal.co.uk or 08448-112121