FIRST the bad news. Every remaining performance of Regent’s Park Theatre and Fiery Angel’s touring production of To Kill A Mockingbird has sold out.

Its 12-day run in Leeds always was unlikely to satisfy ticket demand, especially in a year of renewed interest in Harper Lee with the imminent publication of Go Set A Watchman, the novel she had submitted before Mockingbird.

Mockingbird has seeped into our lives, one of the best-known stories of the 20th century, a status acknowledged by director Timothy Sheader, who previously thrilled Yorkshire audiences with his TMA Best Musical Award-winning production of Sweet Charity.

Lee’s story of racial injustice enveloping a small-town Deep South community usually transfers to the stage with an adult version of Scout looking back on her feisty childhood days, as her widowed lawyer father, Atticus Finch, defends black labourer Tom Robinson (Zackary Momoh) on a charge of raping Mayella Ewell, daughter of the alcoholic bigot Bob Ewell (Ryan Pope).

Now the good news. Sheader divides Scout’s narration between all the cast but Atticus (Daniel Betts) and the three children, Scout (Jemima Bennett at last Saturday’s matinee), brother Jem (Harry Bennett) and their summer-holiday friend Dill (Leo Heller). What’s more, Sheader has them sitting reading the book in chairs at the back of a stage, from which they leap either to read narration in their own British accent or to play a character before resuming their seated posture, silently reading the book once more.

It is a brilliant directorial reminder of Mockingbird’s abiding impact, and the books, in their differing published forms, are left on stage at the interval and the end, inviting you to pick one up and continue its journey.

Yorkshire has played host to one outstanding touring show already this year in the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, and Sheader’s production – again depicting a bewildering world of prejudices and preconceptions through a child’s eyes – is its equal in combining supreme directing with superb storytelling and ensemble and individual performances.

Jon Bausor plays his part with his design, which combines an omnipresent tree and tyre swing with the cast members drawing a street map in chalk, each delineating their home, as if to emphasise the boundaries that separate black from white. Chalk is a tool of the schoolroom, enhancing the children’s perspective, and it erodes all too quickly, a symbol of the bigotry and turmoil blighting the community.

Sheader elicits wonderful performances from all three children, who handle so much of the story so movingly, enchantingly and humorously too, while Momoh’s dignified, dumb-founded and desperate Tom Robinson is tremendously affecting in the courtroom scene.

Betts’s Finch is the best your reviewer has seen, conveying this man of principle, compassion and moral fortitude with intelligence and quiet, unhurried vigour. His Atticus is as much a beacon of hope as Scout’s questioning nature.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Regent’s Park Theatre/Fiery Angel, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk