Say the names Atticus Finch and Scout, and most minds jump to the quixotic Southern lawyer and his tomboy daughter from To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s novel is so deeply imbedded in American culture that it’s all but impossible to watch the curtain rise on Aaron Sorkin’s new stage adaption without at least a few preconceptions.
Once that curtain goes up, Scout instructs the cast to “all rise” as it swiftly assembles pieces of a 1934 courtroom in Maycomb, Alabama and waits for the presiding judge to enter. A black man has been accused of raping a white woman and Scout’s widowed father endeavors to save him from Jim Crow justice. Like a jury overly exposed to media coverage, viewers of this version of Mockingbird might feel dropped onto familiar turf with the duty to examine the details scrupulously.
To Kill a Mockingbird’s Confirmations and Disruptions
Much of this Broadway in Chicago touring production confirms the book and film. Pre-adolescent Scout wears overalls and questions her way into a confounding adult world. Atticus wears the three-piece suit of a homespun gentleman and responds to cruelty with unfathomable empathy. With rolling and flying set pieces, the courtroom transforms into the porch of the Finch house. There, Atticus imparts wisdom to his children and treats Calpurnia, who tends to the motherless family, as a comrade rather than a servant. Calpurnia, a Southern black woman, does not have the luxury of Atticus’ idealism.
What may disrupt recollections of Mockingbird is the role of the young people. Scout’s older brother Jem and summer pal Dill join her in what is both a conversation among themselves and narration for the audience. They become the lens through which we experience the action. Cutting through the grim grownup behavior around them, the kids deliver a constant stream of humor. They also juggle the chronology so that some facts are explained in an early scene, and then dramatized in full later on. It certainly keeps the audience-jury on its toes but at times offers perspectives that seem premature, in this writer’s opinion.
Broadway in Chicago Production is Too Timely for Comfort
Ominously, the divisions that Harper Lee described in To Kill a Mockingbird have only hardened since its publication 70 years ago. Her portrait of rage among locals in Maycomb against the outcome of the Civil War, and their pigeonholing of Atticus as an educated elitist defending a savage predator, are too timely for comfort.
The solid cast tempers that chilling effect, and includes several performances that lit the tiniest spark of hope in this writer’s heart. Steven Lee Johnson brings vulnerability and comedy to Dill when he tries to convince Atticus that his absentee father is a guiding presence. Arianna Gayle Stucki as Mayella Ewell, the young woman who testifies against the defendant, is a raw wound of abuse. Chicago actress Jacqueline Williams as Calpurnia keeps her guard up against maternal sentiment until Scout’s moral compass disarms her.
“Being polite is no way to win a war,” notes Jem about his father before events prove Atticus has steel beneath his smile, no matter the outcome. For a theatergoer, this revival is a chance to rise respectfully and wait for justice that has yet to arrive.
