To Kill a Mockingbird
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre
★★★★☆
In the months before the premiere of Aaron Sorkin’s much anticipated stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, the estate of Harper Lee opened a lawsuit against Scott Rudin, one of its producers.
The issue was the characterisation of Atticus Finch, whose defence of a black man against the charge of rape had become shorthand for American integrity in the years after the book’s publication, in 1960.
In Sorkin’s adaptation, the estate argued, Atticus had been transformed from “a model of wisdom, integrity, and professionalism” into an “apologist for the racial status quo”. The case was eventually settled, with Sorkin compromising on certain elements of the estate’s complaint.
The 2018 production, which makes its Irish premiere as part of tour of Britain and Ireland, still manages to present a far more morally complex version of American liberalism than Lee’s book – compromised by the idealism of its child narrator – does.
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If the novel shows us a civil-rights hero in the making, in the play we are told that even the “most honest person in Maycomb was harbouring a lie”.
Sorkin’s central dramaturgical intervention is to share the narration among the three child characters, Scout and Jem Finch (Anna Munden and Gabriel Scott) and their friend Dill (Dylan Malyn). They are our guides through the embattled events surrounding the trial of Tom Robinson (Aaron Shosanya), which takes place over one hot summer in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression.
Robinson has been wrongfully accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewing (an excellent Evie Hargreaves), and Atticus (Richard Coyle) has been compelled – literally, by Judge Taylor (Stephen Boxer) – to defend him.
Bartlett Sher, the production’s director, nimbly steers the action, which slips between direct address and flashback scenes, aided by Miriam Buether’s fluid set. The most radical visual element of their staging is an empty jury box at Maycomb County Court, which serves to cast the audience as the real jury.
Sorkin’s greatest achievement is to humanise the villains, whom he reveals as victims of poverty and prejudice, just like Tom Robinson. We, like Atticus – given a powerfully nuanced portrayal by Coyle – are presented with a moral conundrum: Atticus’s insistence on empathy for all threatens to overwhelm justice.
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In another departure from Lee’s novel, Sorkin allows us to reflect on the ethical complexity that ensues: he lets Finch’s black maid Calpurnia (Andrea Davy) take Atticus to task when he insists that he believes in respecting everyone. “No matter who you are disrespecting by doing it?” she counters, and walks off stage.
This is a stirring moment that comes just before the final scenes of the play, where Atticus reveals both his moral fibre and his hypocrisy in a single moment. Is he right to cover up a crime in service of the community, Sorkin forces us to ask ourselves.
The verdict in the case of Tom Robinson is shocking despite its inevitability – and there are gasps in the audience when it is read out by Scout, Jem and Dill – but the real question here is one of individual conscience. What would you do if you were to step into Atticus’s shoes? But more than that: what can you do to ensure equality and fairness in the world you live in?
As Sorkin reminds us in the closing moments, “small armies change the world.”
To Kill a Mockingbird is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, February 21st, then at the Grand Opera House, Belfast, from Tuesday, February 24th, until Saturday, March 7th
