Early in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” young Scout Finch starts telling us about a courtroom. She looks upon the seat of justice in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, through a child’s eye, of course. But she does so with the reverence of a girl who will grow up to be a lawyer. She has been raised by her father Atticus to see the court as a church or a chapel, an institution fully capable of fixing the injustices that transpire beyond its doors, a place of refuge, of stability, of hope, of equality under the law.
Sitting there Wednesday night, the Supreme Court flashed into my mind, as it surely did elsewhere in the suitably hushed Nederlander Theatre. Whatever one’s politics, there is no questioning the diminished trust in the institution, both from without and (as Justice Clarence Thomas recently noted) within. And by time frame, I don’t so much mean the years between now and 1960, when Lee’s famous work was published, but between now and 2018, when I reviewed director Bartlett Sher’s production on Broadway, and Wednesday when the first national tour arrived in Chicago, starring Richard Thomas.
Things unravel far faster than they get built.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is a work people tend to know, and have seen. If you saw a staged version around Chicago, you almost certainly saw an adaptation by Christopher Sergel, a venerable text loyal to Lee’s vision. Sergel’s adaptation, published in Woodstock, Illinois, has been the script for countless high-school and community theater productions.
Sorkin’s version is something else entirely. He was hired by the producer Scott Rudin to make a version of the iconic novel more palatable to the present, to diminish its association with the so-called “white savior” narrative, an element of the novel that has the Black citizens of Maycomb standing in the balcony as their hero departs the courtroom, unsuccessful at that. Sorkin added agency for the Black characters in Lee’s story: specifically, he gave voice to the character of Tom Robinson (the excellent Yaegel T. Welch) and significantly changed the relationship between Atticus, the role made famous on film by Gregory Peck, and his domestic helper, Calpurnia (played on the tour by the formidable Chicago actress Jacqueline Williams, revealing to the country a talent we long have known).
In Lee’s novel and the Sergel adaptation, they are in essence a surrogate brother and sister. In Sorkin’s adaptation, Calpurnia pushes back hard against one of Atticus’ core beliefs: that there is good in everyone and that a moral person always makes an attempt to empathize with those who seem hostile, to try and understand why they feel the way they do. And that even includes racists like Bob Ewell (Joey Collins) and his daughter Mayella (Arianna Gayle Stucki, who dives mighty deep into an immensely challenging role).
On a broader level, then, Sorkin turns “Mockingbird” away from a report card on an America making slow but discernible progress under the law and toward an exploration of a key rift between many progressives and what remains of the centrist left: the extent to which the opposition must be called out and destroyed as distinct from engaged and understood.
Lee, of course, was tied both to her time and memory. Sorkin’s restless writing changes her novel, of that there is no question, and inarguably undermines perhaps what mattered most to Lee, Atticus’ courageous heroism. But in so doing, he makes this work vital in terms of contemporary, left-of-center debate. Racism is not the only thing on trial in the courtroom. So is old-school liberalism with its oft-paternalistic insistence on bringing people along.
Thomas, by the way, is excellent. He’s entirely different from the original star, Jeff Daniels, who effected a weary remove, the sense of man battered by the failings of the people in whom he so badly wanted to believe. Thomas is not that actor: his Atticus remains optimistic, idealistic and more transparently naive. You can see his character being pulled between Lee and Sorkin’s different worldviews and it is fascinating to watch.
I think you should know that Sher’s production feels like an event. You’ll likely be moved to tears in surprising places and the whole cast, really, imbues the night with a sense of wrestling with major American questions. Another change in this adaptation is that Dill Harris, beautifully played by Steven Lee Johnson, is pretty clearly a gay kid. You worry for him in the world where Jem Finch (Justin Mark) will be fine, but where Tom was treated so unjustly.
Melanie Moore is very powerful as the touring Scout, although I wish she’d find more quieter moments when her adult self, America’s adult self, emerges from this agonizing history to find, well, perhaps more national pain than progress.
But people of all kinds still come together to watch “To Kill a Mockingbird,” to feel, to think, to wrestle with the past, to try and define goodness so they can pass something on to their kids. Some want to deconstruct; others are searching for a new version of the American center that Lee thought she had found in her Atticus. You’ll have to look for yourself.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “To Kill a Mockingbird”
When: Through May 29
Where: Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Tickets: $35-$149 at 800-775-2000 and www.broadwayinchicago.com
Masks must be worn in the theater though proof of vaccination is no longer required for admission.
