Actor Rolan Bell, who plays 'Ivan' in the stage adaptation of 'The Harder They Come'.- Contributed

Davina Morris, Voice Reporter

London, England:

Playing the role made famous by Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come can make or break a new talent.

It's the play that everyone's talking about and it's really not surprising. After months of anticipation and a massive campaign to find actors from Jamaica or of Jamaican descent, The Harder They Come started its run at London's Theatre Royal Stratford East recently.

A stage adaptation of the popular 1972 Jamaican film of the same name, the production tells the story of 'country boy' Ivan, who heads to the city in the hope of becoming a music star. He soon finds it's not that easy and eventually runs afoul of the law.

Actor Rolan Bell plays Ivan, who was originally played by reggae legend Jimmy Cliff in the film version. So it's no surprise that 22 year-old Bell was nervous about performing on press night with Cliff in the audience.

The Voice: How nervous were you, knowing that Jimmy Cliff was in the audience?

Rolan Bell: Knowing that he was there made me very nervous indeed. But once I was on stage I just tried to focus on the story and the character, rather than who was in the audience.

Did you spot him in the audience while you were performing?

During the interval someone told me where he was sitting, so I spotted him in the second half - at the point where I was singing The Harder They Come. Seeing him kinda took me out of it for a split second. But I just tried to get my focus back quickly!

Did you meet him after the show?

Yeah, I did, and he's a really cool guy. He said he really liked the way I played the character and that was obviously a huge compliment.

With all the characters speaking Jamaican patois, do you think any non-Jamaicans will struggle to understand the play, particularly if it does move to the West End and draws a more middle-class audience?

The film was such a massive success internationally, so there's no reason why the stage play should be any less accessible. I've yet to hear of anyone coming to watch it and struggling to understand it. I mean, I could understand people not understanding certain parts, but I don't think anyone would struggle to understand from start to finish. And I suspect that if the play did go to the West End the accents would get toned down a little - though most of us aren't speaking raw patois, anyway. There'd probably be a compromise, but the play would still need to remain authentic.

As a British actor, did you find it difficult to master a convincing Jamaican accent?

Not really. There weren't any dialect teachers or anything like that. So all the cast members were chosen based on our ability to do the accent. My parents are Jamaican so I picked up my accent from them.

Were you familiar with the film before you landed your role in the play?

My mum first told me about the film when I was in my teens. My dad was a singer for a short while, so my mum told me a bit about the music industry in Jamaica and related that to the film. But we didn't actually have a copy of the film at the time. But I watched it eventually and really liked it. And then I watched it again more recently, after I landed the audition for my part. Of course, it helped watching the play before I began the audition process.

Can you relate to Ivan?

Yeah, I can. Obviously, the world isn't exactly the same now as it was back when the film was set. But the story itself is timeless. I can't see myself picking up a gun, but I can understand why Ivan felt that he was driven to violence. He had a talent, but wasn't able to make the most of his talent without being exploited. He got to a point where he had no money and he was starving. It's not like today where wannabe music stars go on shows like X Factor and talk about how hungry they are to achieve their musical dreams.

For Ivan, hungry quite literally meant hungry. When you reach that kind of low, survival instincts kick in and I guess you do whatever you need to do in order to survive.