"To Kill a Mockingbird" Still Has Teeth

I imagine even an Oscar and Emmy winning screenwriter and playwright like Aaron Sorkin must have had some doubts about taking on what is arguably the most beloved American novel of all time (not to mention a beloved film as well), To Kill a Mockingbird, and adapting it for the stage.

And yet, he came up with the goods. After opening in late 2018, the play has enjoyed record box office and now the national tour will be on the road until the summer of 2023. Sorkin’s adaptation takes its place alongside Harper Lee’s novel and Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as an equal among greats.

Whether it be in works like The West Wing, The Social Network, or even last year’s Being the Ricardos, Sorkin has a way of upping the stakes and tension on whatever he’s presenting.

And so, while Lee’s novel will remain the timeless classic it is because, sadly, its themes endure, Sorkin approaches the material with the eye of a contemporary who still sees the relevance today, even though the action still takes place in 1934 Alabama.

Although the play opened on Broadway about halfway through the Trump presidency, it was well before the fiery final year of his presidency, when the news was saturated with stories like George Floyd’s murder, the most divisive election in modern history, and, as a capper, the events of January 6th, 2021.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, so I was unsure which lines were Lee’s and which were Sorkin’s, but suffice it to say that on the stage, spoken by live actors, many of the lines jumped off the page with startling relevancy.

“Times are changing,” says Atticus. “Are you sure about that?” counters Capurnia.

Or these:

“You folks have no shortage of catchy slogans.”

“The things you can’t see are scarier than the things you can see.”

“A conscience can be exhausting . . . a mob is where people can take a break from their conscience.”

When Jem challenges his father about the Civil War, Atticus says, “It was yesterday, and it will always be yesterday.”

I mean, have we really come that far from 1934 Alabama?

In a bit of directorial flash, during the closing argument, director Bartlett Sher has Atticus turn to the audience and deliver the line, “We can’t go on like this. We need to heal this wound.”

Sorkin and Sher have wisely, I think, shifted the focus to Atticus Finch himself, and Scout shares narrating duties with Jem and Dill. The play opens as the trial begins, allowing the story to be told in flashback.

Atticus Finch has always been seen as a heroic character in American literature, but here, in these times, his honesty and decency are no longer pure virtues, but perhaps show his naivete and appeasement. In the end, as Scout puts it, “Desire to do the right thing is the right thing.” That may be true, but it’s also sobering.

Only in the theater can 71-year-old Richard Thomas play the father of ten-year-old Scout. And yet, from my mezzanine seat, Thomas—one of our country’s underappreciated actors, considering his body of work and range of performances—looked as young and agile as his John Boy Walton of fifty years ago. He makes a great Atticus Finch.

The actors are uniformly good, but I’d single out Joey Collins (Bob Ewell), Arianna Gayle Stucki (Mayella Ewell), and Steven Lee Johnson (Dill) for individual praise. Mary Badham (who was Oscar-nominated for playing Scout in the film) plays Mrs. Henry Dubose, a role that has shrunk from what was in the book, but she makes the most of her scene in the play.

Jacqueline Williams as Calpurnia gets some of the best lines, and gets the final line in the play as well.

Some may quibble over any changes made to the book (and for a time, the Harper Lee estate did hold up the play over disputes about how Finch’s character changed), but a great work of art has enough nuance that it should be malleable to some extent. And when you have a great modern writer like Aaron Sorkin fiddling with your text, the result is bound to be interesting.

This is more than interesting. It stands on its own, and seeing it as live theater was deeply moving. This is a must-see, today more than ever.