To Kill a Mockingbird at the Peace Center
Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is destined to go down as one of the all-time great works of theater.
Like Harper Lee’s masterful 1960 source novel and Robert Mulligan’s iconic 1962 film version starring Gregory Peck as noble Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch, Sorkin’s interpretation appeals to an array of emotions through unforgettable characters and exchanges that live rent-free in receptive audience’s hearts and minds.
Scout. Jem. Dill. Calpurnia. Tom. Heck Tate. Judge Taylor. Bob and Mayella Ewell. Boo.
They’re all here in familiar, largely faithful forms, but with just enough of Sorkin’s trademark witty edge to render these household names distinct incarnations.
The rare non-musical on the Peace Center’s annual Broadway touring show slate, director Barlett Sher’s production fills the stage with kinetic scene changes that showcase Miriam Buether’s impeccable sets, smoothly transitioning from the Maycomb courtroom to the Finch’s front porch and other spots with symphonic precision.
But before we get to those familiar locales, Sorkin begins this To Kill a Mockingbird in a strange quasi-purgatory with Scout Finch (Melanie Moore), her big brother Jem (Justin Mark), and visiting summer Dill (Steven Lee Johnson) reflecting on the events yet to transpire. Like the literary Scout, this narrator reflects from an ambiguous future date, but here she’s joined by the other two youths, and the trinity of adults channeling their memories through their childhood selves in those fateful, humid 1934 days produces a lively interplay, keeping attendees informed and entertained.
Once the bare columns of this eerie transitional space ascend into the rafters and are replaced by more grounded, terrestrial sights, including the branches of a towering tree, the beloved story kicks in, pulling Richard Thomas’ Atticus into the fray. Inhering the role Jeff Daniels originated on Broadway, the actor feels firmly at home as arguably the most adored father in literature, balancing the part’s potent mix of humor, wisdom, grace, and humility with class.
(The guy’s got Mamet, McNally, and Shakespeare on his resumé, after all. Any John-Boy dismissals are as outdated as The Waltons, though you can’t help but wonder how playing one of TV’s favorite sons informed this decidedly grown-up performance.)
Though he commands each scene — outdone only by Jacqueline Williams’ razor-sharp Calpurnia — Thomas receives ample support from his talented supporting cast. Wholly believable as children, despite Mark and Johnson towering over the 5′ 9″ Thomas, the secondary trio offers steady delights — particularly Johnson’s Dill, whose precocious musings gleefully recall his real-life inspiration, Truman Capote.
The primary narrator of the three, Moore is likewise electric as overalls-clad tomboy Scout, though her accent work bounces between textbook Southern, toddler, and even old-school New Yawk. It’s the most varied vocal performance of the ensemble, but ranks up with the backwoods drawls of Joey Collins’ Bob and Arianna Gayle Stucki’s Mayella, the big-hearted kindness of Yaegel T. Welch’s Tom, and the holier-than-thou bile of Mary Badham’s Mrs. Henry Dubose.
The exaggerated voices, motion, humor, hate, and humility are but a few of Sorkin’s successful imaginative choices, which also include the three children down on the courtroom floor for Tom’s trial, weaving amongst the session’s players, unseen in their spectral presences from the future. But the details that the playwright omits are just as fascinating to contemplate.
Gone is the rabid dog scene, which likely would have required immense imagination to convincingly pull off, and the single-floor courtroom staging all but rules out the story’s most devastating line. (If you know, you know.) Nevertheless, silver medalist “Hey, Boo” endures and lands with its intended wallop, despite a somewhat thin build-up for his character, who’s all but forgotten in the second act until a late-breaking comment from Dill reminds theatergoers (and, seemingly, the characters) of his existence.
That there’s a second act at all comes as somewhat of a surprise, too. The opening 90 minutes flow so effortlessly and cover so much ground that it seems headed for completion in another 30.
However, there’s still plenty to cover in Act II — enough for a tad bit over an hour — namely the re-appropriation of the titular phrase’s origins into Atticus’ closing argument, an expansion of the novel and film versions with some Sorkin-isms that momentarily take the audience out of the experience and raise questions of whether the character is speaking to the court or the theater.
But the ol’ razzle-dazzle also gives Thomas a chance to flex his dramatic skills in ways that only a Sorkin monologue can, and the actor rises to the occasion with a command of language and movement that suggests he should be foremost remembered as a stage actor. It’s stretches like these that solidify the adapter’s command of the material and willingness to monkey with it. And far more often than not, his risk-taking pays off.
To Kill a Mockingbird runs through April 23 at the Peace Center. For details and tickets, visit peacecenter.org.
(Photos by Julieta Cervantes)
