#To kill a mockingbird broadway musical trial

When Mayella’s father is disgraced by Atticus in the courtroom and shown to be a liar he vows to get his revenge. The young people also hope to catch sight of their neighbor, the reclusive Boo Radley, who has not been seen in years and whom they fear is a bogeyman.Ĭelia Keenan-Bolger and Jeff Daniels in a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Photo credit: Julieta Cervantes)Īs the town takes sides as to the priority of a white man defending a black man on such a charge, Scout, Jem and Dill find themselves caught up in the racially charged situation created by the trial. The case is obviously trumped up as Tom is crippled in one arm and could not have overpowered Mayella Ewell but this is the Deep South where such things used to be believed. Scout’s widowed father Atticus, the only lawyer in town who would take the case of a black man, is assigned to defend Tom Robinson from the charge of raping a young white woman.

Narrated by Jean Louise Fitch, nicknamed Scout, it tells of the year that she, her older brother Jem, and their summer neighbor Dill (based the young Truman Capote) learned of racial injustice in the world along with needing to see the world as others see it. To Kill a Mockingbird is famously set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, not too different from Monroeville, where Harper Lee grew up with her lawyer father, in 1934 when she would have been eight years old. Also there are conversations implied in the novel which Scout would not have been privy to like her father’s interviews with his client or his friendly arguments with their longtime housekeeper Calpurnia which Sorkin has filled in for his audience. Sorkin also gives the black characters a voice, one they did not have in the novel which is told by the child Scout starting when she is six and ending when she is nine. The first act is almost as leisurely as the novel which also lacked tension, but the intensity builds up to a resounding crescendo in the second act as it reaches its moving, tragic and inevitable conclusion.

#To kill a mockingbird broadway musical trial

You can’t blame him for starting with the novel’s trial (which doesn’t begin until halfway through the novel) at the outset and then doubling back to a few incidents that happened earlier. While Lee had seven hours of reading time to tell her story, Sorkin has two hours and 30 minutes (including an intermission) to tell his. The cast of Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Photo credit: Julieta Cervantes) Miriam Buether’s set design cleverly travels from the porch of the Finch house to the trial and back again, with a few digressions (the kitchen, the outside of the town’s jail, Jim’s bedroom) along the way, making it possible to tell this long and detailed story swiftly and intelligibly. Early on it was decided that the children Scout, Jim and Dill would be played by adults and although it takes a little bit of getting used to before you forget that they are not children, they suitably alternate as the play’s three narrators telling the story from years later when they are grown-ups.

As lawyer Atticus Finch, Jeff Daniels, giving the best New York stage performance of his career, is superb as a man of integrity who has his own flaws. In this work, he has been aided by director Bartlett Sher’s impeccable casting of each and every role. There are changes but the book was published 57 years ago and social expectations are different now. His Broadway adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, and now iconic 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, recounting a miscarriage of justice in 1934 Alabama, is a marvel of invention having recast the printed page into a stage worthy vehicle without having to change too much or be untrue to the novel. Award winning playwright, television and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is clever enough to know this after having adapted the books Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs and Molly’s Game from one medium to another. Victor Gluck, Editor-in-ChiefA novel is not the same thing as a play and a book is not the same as a movie.