Director: Bartlett Sher
Writer: Harper Lee
Adapter: Aaron Sorkin
Many people who have no affinity with Harper Lee’s 1960 novel will have a folk memory of the film of To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck, at the peak of his powers, as lawyer Atticus Finch. He provides the moral centre, in a world where good and evil are mutable.
Lee herself had grown up in a family of lawyers, in the Alabama of the 1930’s depression, when segregation was the norm. The book she wrote in 1960 captured all that she had assimilated from her home state in childhood, and all the liberal leanings she had developed in exile from it. The central character, Scout Finch, sees her innocent child’s world view fractured when her lawyer father defends a young black man accused of the rape of a white woman.
The challenge of this play is to bring a 2026 British audience completely into the world of a segregated 1930’s Alabama; to make the characters and their predicament live as something more than a piece of remote 20th Century history.
Director Aaron Sorkin brings prestige and pedigree to the production, trailing Hollywood Awards for his big screen works, and high distinction for his West Wing creation. The production is described as a “new play” by Sorkin, who is credited as “Adaptor/Playwright”.
Sorkin has marshalled his resources on all fronts. The action switches between the domestic scenes of the Finch household and the classic courtroom setting. The scene changes are slickly choreographed with all cast members involved in the transformations. Southern accents are convincing and universally sustained. Incidental music is used unobtrusively and only a hymn and a psalm punctuate the drama. This may be Alabama, but the climate is cool. Finch removes his jacket at one point but otherwise no-one makes use of a fan or a handkerchief. And while the drama takes place over many months, the actors are immune to seasonal changes.
In book form, this is very much a story of two halves. There is the children’s world of Scout, her brother Jem, and out-of-towner Dill, as they play and tease, fight and joke, and scare one another with dares to draw the reclusive local bogeyman, Boo Radley, from his lair. The adult world is on the periphery, strange and full of mysteries. It carries darkness and danger, and leads to the formality of a courtroom drama, with the momentum and theatricality of the legal process moving towards the inevitable denouement of the jury verdict.
The younger actors – particularly Anna Munden as Scout, and Gabriel Scott as Jem – are called on to help narrate, hovering on the edge of the adult world and speaking directly to the audience. Dylan Malyn, as out-of-towner Dill, is originally proffered as comic relief, but brings genuine depth to the troubled youth. During Evie Hargreaves testimony as Mayella Ewell, time was frozen. There are excellent performances at the other end of the age spectrum from Oscar Pearce as the racist “white trash” Bob Ewell, and Simon Hepworth as the presumed drunkard Link Deas.
Aaron Shosanya deserves considerable praise for his dignified portrayal of the alleged rapist, Tom Robinson, maintaining his nobility and decency in the face of the white man’s justice, and a prosecuting barrister who harangues him as “Boy”. The “N” word is also deployed with casual contempt, a reminder that the play is set some decades before rappers rehabilitated the noun.
Richard Coyle as Atticus Finch, brings a freshness and lightness to the role. Rather than a dull sobersides, Coyle’s Finch is humourous, playful, at times acidic and ironic. He may be the moral centre of the novel, and even of this play, but he is not one dimensionally dull. Andrea Davy, as the maid Calpurnia, provides a sympathetic but caustic foil to her high-minded employer.
Sorkin is right to claim that this is a “new play” rather than simply an adaptation. He has brought to Harper Lee’s original a new perspective honed in the world of TV and cinema. In that world scenes are intercut rapidly, the final edit defines the drama, and the cutting room floor awaits the trimmings. But it is not a play for the stage. In the theatre the rapid scene shifts call for constant movement of scenery, which is distracting and disruptive. The commentary on the action by the child actors is of limited value and creates an aura of omniscience at odds with their roles in the drama. But Sorkin has also drawn out subtleties that are not always in evidence.
This is a powerful story, an interesting adaptation, there are some excellent performances, and it is well directed. The parts nearly completely add up to a whole, and that is not faint praise for such a demanding undertaking.
Runs until 7th February 2026 before continuing on tour
