To Kill a Mockingbird, the stage version, performed in my city. Since I don’t pay attention to social media, I didn’t realize it until weeks after tickets went on sale. My tickets were cheap—just under forty dollars—and were about the seventh row in the mezzanine. Because I taught To Kill a Mockingbird, I couldn’t wait to see it on stage.
I must preface this by confessing To Kill a Mockingbird is not my favorite book though. It’s not even in my top 25. I do have a copy of it in my small library, simply because it was my mother’s. Technically, it was my mother’s high school friend’s, who appears to have taken it from her boyfriend who would later become her husband. It’s the 1962 paperback edition with a quote from Gregory Peck on the first page, who would star as Atticus in the film. The price: 75 cents. The Scotch-taped cover is traumatic, with a mockingbird at the top with six narrow, brightly colored, triangular spears in the bird on a black background. Mom rarely threw anything away, so I’m not surprised she had the book, although I wonder how much she liked it. People who gush over it I question with an eye roll. I love its themes, but I feel like my students, when they question me after reading fifty pages, “What is this about?”
To Kill a Mockingbird would never be published today in its current state. I never understood the need for the two summers. Why not just condense everything together into one summer, establishing the relationship with Dill and the mystery surrounding Boo Radley with flashbacks? Plus I never connected with tomboy Scout although I could relate to her smarty-pants personality. But as someone who cannot get published, I should probably keep my opinions to myself.
I do not agree with all the controversy surrounding To Kill a Mockingbird—the new controversy, not the old. The old reasons for its censorship are the typical ones: the use of the “n” word and the mature content not fit for junior high or even high schoolers. The new controversy is that it is a white savior story, a story that is not told from the point of view of a person of color. This is the one I take issue with for if one understands the context of To Kill a Mockingbird, one might think before crying foul.
To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s childhood experiences. Her father was a lawyer and Dill was none other than Truman Capote. (Capote would even confirm the existence of an old neighbor who put trinkets into the knot of a tree for them.) A similar case of a black man on trial for raping a white woman happened just a few towns over. To Kill a Mockingbird stems from Lee’s childhood. Why shouldn’t she write about it? And why should we take issue that she wrote about it?
People can respond to the book anyway they wish. Like Ursula K. Le Guin said about reading, “What it means to you, is what it means to you.” Le Guin didn’t differentiate between a singular “you” and a plural “you,” but I will. I will accept that some people gush over the book while others criticize its point of view and popularity. I see both sides of the issue, yet I will always remain biased to the fascinating backstories of inspiration from authors. Knowing that Lee wrote a novel that has autobiographical details delights me.
I was intrigued how a play would transform the story onto a stage, especially since the movie only gave me a meh reaction. I am not a theatergoer by nature. I don’t understand why a plot driven primarily through dialogue cannot be trimmed down to two hours, why all plays run closer to three. I rarely even see movies in theaters, except when it’s something like Barbie.
When my mom was still alive, we attended a handful of plays together: Grease, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Noises Off, and Cinderella. I feel a bit verklempt whenever I sit down in the theater and she’s not beside me—especially when I went to Manheimer Steamroller’s Christmas concert, because Mom always bought their holiday CDs. Had my life not been in complete disarray at the time, I would have attended Little House on the Prairie, the musical, but it was not to be (I’m still upset with myself for missing out on that). In other words, I’m choosy when it comes to plays.
Yet I’m fascinated with plays and their scripts. The Crucible is my favorite, although Arthur Miller is not (I’m team Marilyn all the way no matter how high maintenance she might have been). ‘Night Mother was a play—why my sister and I loved that movie I’ll never know because it’s just a bunch of talking, until the end. We knew Sissy Spacek from Carrie and The River, but we were more fans of Jessica Lange, adoring Sweet Dreams and Country. I had no idea that Steel Magnolias, another of our favorites, was originally a play. And I was even more astounded with A Few Good Men. Why I was shocked that that was originally a play surprises me in and of itself since that movie would work beautifully on a stage.
None other than Aaron Sorkin adapted To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage.
I had no idea the depth of Sorkin’s work. I am not a West Wing person, but I saw Malice, Moneyball, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and could probably recite half the dialogue in A Few Good Men. I’m one of those people who reads every word on my television screen, so I take delight in actors who are writers, producers, directors, or finding familiar names that match other shows I watch.
And while I would have preferred the guy from the bus—Jeff Daniels (I guess it would be more appropriate to describe him as the guy from the elevator in the movie about the bus)—to play Atticus, I knew Richard Thomas as well, the guy with the mole from The Waltons. Mom watched The Waltons; I did not, feeling as though I would be cheating on Little House on the Prairie. I knew him most from his odd character name: John Boy. I remember thinking when I was little, would that make me Julie Girl? I liked him in Stephen King’s It, the original TV miniseries.
From my Row G in the mezzanine, Richard Thomas has aged well.
But I almost didn’t go. A blizzard warning started at midnight and the freezing temperatures almost convinced me to stay in the warmth and comfort of my house. Part of me hoped they postponed the play as I dreaded the thought of going out in the snowy dark cold with poorly plowed streets and frigid temperatures. But as I sat captivated within the first five minutes, I knew To Kill a Mockingbird was going to be worth the trek through an abominable winter.
I took issue immediately with the beginning of the play: Scout, Jem, and Dill narrate back and forth (they do this throughout the play which was positively delightful), but they began with Bob Ewell’s stabbing. I wanted to scream “Spoiler alert!” but I sat with my mouth clamped shut, wondering why Sorkin made such a narrative change. In the end, it worked. In fact, most of his changes transferred beautifully onto the stage.
Like the Gregory Peck film, the stage version focuses more on Atticus than Scout. Scout’s importance on the stage is equal to both Jem and Dill (all three were wonderful, with Dill’s humor my favorite). With this focus, we lose school scenes and the subsequent reading lectures, which doesn’t hinder the impact of any themes. But we lose most of Boo Radley. The only scene shown on stage is that of Jem’s pants. While Dill and Scout tell Jem about the dolls and the gum found in the tree, there’s nothing more until the end. Miss Maudie’s house never burns down either, eliminating the mysterious blanket on Scout’s shoulders. Boo’s reveal in the last pages of the book is surprising, even if readers caught all the foreshadowing. The play’s reveal of Boo is anti-climatic, yet he’s the mockingbird metaphor.
There’s no rabid dog in the play and Jem does not read to Mrs. Dubose. Jem and Scout never visit Calpurnia’s church and Aunt Alexandra does not exist. Other than the minimization of Boo Radley scenes, all other scene cuts don’t impact the play at all. But two of Sorkin’s revisions bothered me.
The first: Atticus seems way more warm and fuzzy than he does in the book. Book Atticus has a dry sense of humor. He’s a peripheral parent when it comes to the lovey-dovey aspects of childhood, yet a fountain of wisdom when it comes to life’s lessons. Stage Atticus was more involved than Mike Brady. Because Scout is no longer our point of reference for the play, scenes with just Calpurnia and Atticus didn’t always hold true to their book counterparts, with a more brother/sister or even husband/wife bickering unraveling for us on stage.
I realize that To Kill a Mockingbird is a heavy book in terms of plot and theme, and Scout herself in the book provides comic relief, as does Dill. But at times, the stage version seemed a bit too comical, with Atticus delivering multiple comedic one-liners. What I take issue with most is the iconic line of Atticus, the one that reveals the book’s most prominent theme: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
For only reasons Sorkin could explain, he replaced walk and climb with crawl.
Book Atticus wouldn’t use the word crawl. It’s a childish word likened to squirm. We walk in other people’s shoes, within their skin. We don’t crawl inside someone else to experience their world. I hated the sound of it. “Crawl around.” All I could envision was Buffalo Bill: “It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” Other characters speak of this “crawl around” a handful of times throughout the play, prompting laughter from the audience, so I could never reconcile myself to just one use, but several. I cringed every time.
Yet Sorkin’s pacing of the play was beautifully crafted. The first scene is of the courtroom, which doesn’t happen until much later in the book. The scenes bounce out of chronological order, which I preferred. I even thought my students would enjoy the book more if it were written as such, as it would eliminate those first fifty pages of scene setting and characterization, where students aren’t sure where the book is taking them.
The characters seamlessly wheel the sets on and off the stage. The Finches’ front porch was delightful, a roof even coming down from above, with an ornate screen door for characters to walk through. Even though I knew the story inside and out, the stage captivated my attention. The courtroom scenes were more dramatic than in the book—I guess I was expecting an understated conflict, like much of A Few Good Men until Colonel Jessup lunges at Lieutenant Kaffee and says, “I’m going to piss in your dead skull.” (I would love to see A Few Good Men on stage.)
The play streamlines the plot much better than the book, which has lumpy stops and starts, tied together by either Boo Radley or Tom Robinson. On stage, the plot is always moving forward, sometimes too fast, but it stays focused on Tom, dotting Boo’s backstory on the edges, while maintaining its forward trajectory. Sorkin captures Lee’s world well from page to stage, mindful of little details while cutting entire chapters. I wish Sorkin would transfer more classics onto the stage.
It’s an excellent play for those familiar and unfamiliar with To Kill a Mockingbird. If I rated it with stars, I’d give it 4.5 out of 5. Boo Radley should have maintained his prominence in the stage version though. And please, never crawl around in someone else’s skin.