‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Review: Aaron Sorkin’s Courtroom Spark
metroweekly.comTo Kill a Mockingbird (★★★★☆), Aaron Sorkin’s riveting adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.At some point in U.S.
history, the race, class, and gender dynamics driving Lee’s combustible scenario might feel quaint, laughably antiquated, obsolete.
We’re not there yet. Mockingbird‘s Southern-fried courtroom drama still holds plenty of compelling truth in its reflection of racial injustice.The accused, Tom Robinson (Yaegel T.
Welch), a Negro in official ’30s parlance, faces the electric chair — if a lynch mob doesn’t get their hands on him first. And seemingly all that stands between Tom and his worst fate is the most decent and honest white man in the county, a self-described country lawyer named Atticus Finch.For this smooth-running touring iteration of director Bartlett Sher’s Tony-winning Broadway production, Richard Thomas embodies Atticus in all his goodness, and complex moral reasoning.Enshrined in the American imagination as an honest and decent country boy, Thomas injects just enough self-doubt and self-awareness into his portrayal to complicate the character’s heroic standing without diminishing him as a model of integrity.Sorkin’s play — narrated by both Atticus’ precocious daughter, Scout (Melanie Moore), and willful teenage son, Jem (Justin Mark) — draws attention to Atticus’ tendency to excuse the bigotry and racial animus expressed by their “friends and neighbors,” while also encouraging his kids to treat all people equally.
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