To Kill A Mockingbird - June 4 2022, Gielgud Theatre

 If you didn’t ‘do’ To Kill A Mockingbird at school then it remains the one classic novel of the Twentieth Century that you can enjoy on your own terms. It’s a book with some remarkably vivid depictions of Alabama from the memory of Harper Lee, who based the heroic lawyer Atticus Finch on her own father, and who told the story from the point of three kids: Scout and Jem, Atticus’s children—and their friend Dill who is based on Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote.

The book was revered and the film starring Gregory Peck is one of the best cinematic adaptations of a novel. Nothing else came from the pen of Harper Lee and she didn’t say much more about it. However when she died there was an unseemly rush to release the work that Lee had originally presented: a memoir of Jean-Louise “Scout” Finch going back to her childhood home. It turned out that To Kill A Mockingbird had been taken from this work and that’s the novel. The ‘sequel’—Go Set A Watchman—had something going for it: more of Harper Lee’s amazing descriptive writing.

With the rights available, this courtroom drama version of the story comes from Aaron Sorkin: the powerful dramatic writer who wrote A Few Good Men as well as The American President and The West Wing. Atticus is played by Rafe Spall and the kids are played by adult actors pretending to be children. This adds a layer of comedy, as well as Sorkin’s witty script, but it doesn’t take away from the power of the racist crimes at the heart of the story.

When you’re a kid things are clear-cut but Atticus raises his children to appreciate that people can be more than one thing. This means that the lady down the road may spout racist abuse with abandon, but she is sick. Or that the father of the woman who’s accused Tom Robinson of rape is otherwise a reasonable man when you consider the extent of the Civil War defeat visited on him and others seventy years previously, In this play the kids have a clear view of right and wrong but Atticus has to be brought to that conclusion through his experience in court. And the family’s maid, Calpurnia, gets more of a voice than she has in the book or the movie: she becomes a crusader for her own people who had a terrible defeat visited on them since way before the Civil War.

The publication of Go Set A Watchman was troubling for those who admired Atticus because it presented a more mature version of the character - a man who would think that a  poor white woman who cried ‘rape’ (or whose father did) is “lower” in status than a hard-working family man who is black. There: status, class, religion and everything else that goes to promote racial prejudice is presented in a story which Harper Lee’s publisher knew wouldn’t work as well as did To Kill A Mockingbird.

Okay, so Aaron Sorkin gives us a new Atticus Finch. At the end of the prize fight you look for the guy who’s dancing around and that’s your winner. Sorkin is a writer of thematic drama and his re-use of phrases like the prize fighter, or “joy cometh in the morning” add to the fun of his scripts. But this is the words, it’s the structure of the story that’s his genuine gift. He takes apart the novel and frames it entirely as a courtroom drama with flashbacks to the build-up during a long summer holiday. And he used modern-day racist language, taken from Breitbart forums, to put into the mouth of the ignorant racist Bob Ewell (Patrick O’Kane)—who Finch has demolished in court, even though he wasn’t the one being accused. Poppy Lee Friar has a difficult task in being the ‘victim’ in court, as does Jude Owusu as Tom—the accused and of course the real victim. Pamela Nomvette as Calpurnia gets the first-pump moment of the night… But it’s the kids: Gwyneth Keyworth is a delight as Scout Finch; Harry Redding is Jem—playing a transition from boyhood really quite nicely; and David Moorst is excellent comic relief as Dill.

Do racists go to plays like this and emerge feeling that they want to change? Do predominantly white, middle class people go and fist-pump anti-racist speeches in theatres then go home to be unpleasant to those they consider to be less than them? Maybe, and certainly other writers would have adapted this novel in a way that made the audience feel a bit uncomfortable. But Aaron Sorkin found modern racist ‘thinking’ to add some depth to the lines of a bigoted and nasty person. There’s still a long way to go… but this play with its live played musical underscore and its neat staging is a tale of a flawed hero who starts to make the effort.