Aaron Sorkin Rewrites Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

The National Tour production is a lesson learned.

The poster for the National Tour of To Kill a Mockingbird, now playing at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, is reprinted on the playbill and whatever merchandise is deemed appropriate. It lists five names, all equal in size of the title — the thing typically deemed the most important, implying that all of these names are of equal footing to To Kill a Mockingbird:

RICHARD THOMAS
as ATTICUS FINCH in
HARPER LEE’s
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
a new play by
AARON SORKIN
directed by
BARTLETT SHER

HARPER LEE: In 1960, first-time author Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird, which, to her surprise, was an instant hit. Her semi-autobiographical tale is that of Scout, a child of the Depression and of Atticus Finch, southern small-town Maycomb’s most outstanding lawyer. She spends her days with her brother Jem, eating food prepared by their cook Calpurnia, messing with new kid Dill and the recluse down the street, Boo Radley — all while Atticus works on the definitive case of his career, defending the innocent Tom Robinson against accusations of rape. However, since Tom is black and this is ’30s Alabama, Tom is guilty before proven innocent.

Lee’s tale instantly entered the ‘Great American Novel’ canon, placed on the shelf amongst the likes of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Hemingway. She won the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Arts. She never wrote another novel (Go Set a Watchman, the book’s ‘sequel’ published five decades later in 2015 turned out to be an early draft of Mockingbird). It has been read by every middle schooler in America (those not in book-banning states) ever since.

Her book was most famously immortalized in the Robert Mulligan-directed, Horton Foote-penned Best Picture-winning 1962 film, featuring an Oscar-winning performance from Gregory Peck as Atticus. The movie, just like the book, is a tale of injustice, compassion, poverty, and growing up — even if you don’t want to.

AARON SORKIN: Best known for The West Wing, The Newsroom, The Social Network, and A Few Good Men, the witty Oscar winner adapted Lee’s novel, not the film of course, in this adaptation that premiered on Broadway in 2018. Lee’s estate wasn’t happy with Sorkin making it his own, filing suit just before the play’s New York opening. It’s easy to see why, as Aaron Sorkin makes ’30s Alabama speak like Aaron Sorkin, rapid-fire, linguistic-twisting, and sardonic. He’s a centrist of the worst kind, confusing his refusal to take a stand with intellectualism. Characters are right or wrong because the basic laws of morality say so. Atticus is the good guy, so he’s right all the time. The poor farmers are dumb because they’re racist — not once considering any sort of inverse.

That is, of course, not at all how Lee portrays her characters or the world that they inhabit. The reason Lee’s novel is complex is because people are complex. It’s taught to schoolchildren, those on the outside-looking-in of the world, because, pardon the pun, the world is not as simple as black and white. It’s about how to lead with empathy, ask questions, and let your actions speak louder than your words (or the words of others). In a moment of fathering, Lee’s Atticus dispenses the most enduring advice of the novel when he says, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’

Sorkin has his Atticus repeat this mantra, but he’s unable to do it himself. Children are children, poor farmers are racist — it’s all too easy. Gone is Atticus’ humility or optimism, instead replaced with a version that is wholly a Sorkin character, one that can only see good in good people and bad in bad people. Even with the benefit of hindsight, Sorkin can’t dig deep to make any sort of statement on the world we live in now.

BARTLETT SHER: Since this production is, in part, produced by Lincoln Center Theater, resident director Sher is tasked with bringing this script to life on stage, recreating his Broadway direction for this National Tour. Sher directs big, bringing (seemingly) every piece of the set from New York on tour, rolling them around the stage to recreate every location in the story. Miriam Buether’s scenic design received Tony recognition.

Assembling a hard-working cast, Sher lets the performances play just as large as the ideas they express. This is largely true of the adult actors playing the children — Maeve Moynihan plays Scout with a curious eye, Justin Mark (Jem) and Steven Lee Johnson (Dill) find the maturity in their growing characters. However, despite being a story told from the children’s perspective, nobody looms as large as Atticus Finch played by…

RICHARD THOMAS: The perfect choice for Atticus. (If you’ll excuse a quick personal anecdote: my grandmother raised me on The Waltons, Thomas’ most iconic role. In one of our final conversations, I told her I would be seeing John Boy play Atticus Finch, one of her favorite film characters. She beamed. She would have loved this performance.) He’s gentle, but stern. He’s compassionate, but unforgiving of prejudice. He’s an optimist, perhaps Atticus’ most tragic character flaw, one that leads to disappointment. Atticus has become a role that actors look forward to aging into, like King Lear or Willy Loman. Thomas, whether he knew it or not, was training his entire career to play this role, finding humanity and honesty in even the most difficult of characters. It may seem easy to do so with Atticus Finch since he’s the literary embodiment of such characters, but it’s a lot easier said than done.

ATTICUS FINCH: That very character that looms large over the play. The one given billing above the title. Atticus has been taught and studied and debated and judged for over seven decades because he’s complicated. He wants the world to be a better place, one where people are kind to each other and willing to listen and change and look for the best in others. Scout sees these qualities in her father and he tries to pass them down to her and her brother. It’s all idyllic because he strives for that picturesque world. He always says the right thing because that’s how Scout sees him. He always does the right thing because that’s what beacons of morality do. These themes are all present in this National Tour of To Kill a Mockingbird, the story that helps you strive for that very optimism. Sorkin does, at least, understand the story’s notion that trying to do the right thing is the right thing to do. It’s a lesson we could all be reminded of, much less learn, and one that is coming soon to a city near you.

To Kill a Mockingbird runs about 2 hours 45 minutes with one intermission. Recommended for ages 12 and up. The show does include the use of a particular word in the context of the era that some may find offensive.