To Kill a Mockingbird tour

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 5:08pm

Any casting ideas? I wonder if this is a sign The Broadway run will end before the tour. If so I could see abunch of the current understudies filling out the tour cast. I hope the tour has some broadway names in it

[DoTheDood]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 5:16pm

The article says that "Mr. Sorkin, Jeff Daniels, and members of the Broadway cast of To Kill A Mockingbird are taking the play to Washington, DC", so I'm assuming this is a tour of the Broadway cast (could be wrong, but that's how I read it). Either the show is closing on Broadway before DC or they are getting understudies for Broadway (which I really doubt seeing that Daniels name is part of the advertising) 

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/MOCKINGBIRD-Tour-to-Launch-from-DC-Plus-Sorkin-and-Cast-to-Appear-at-Special-Event-for-Theatre-in-Our-Schools-Month-20190328

[JSquared2]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 5:35pm

DoTheDood said: "The article says that "Mr. Sorkin, Jeff Daniels, and members of the Broadway cast of To Kill A Mockingbird are taking the play to Washington, DC", so I'm assuming this is a tour of the Broadway cast (could be wrong, but that's how I read it). Either the show is closing on Broadway before DC or they are getting understudies for Broadway (which I really doubt seeing that Daniels name is part of the advertising)

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/MOCKINGBIRD-Tour-to-Launch-from-DC-Plus-Sorkin-and-Cast-to-Appear-at-Special-Event-for-Theatre-in-Our-Schools-Month-20190328"

 

 Actually, if you read the article it just says that

"On Tuesday (April 2), to culminate National "Theatre In Our Schools" Month, Mr. Sorkin, Jeff Daniels, and members of the Broadway cast of To Kill A Mockingbird are taking the play to Washington, DC, for an unprecedented special presentation at the Library of Congress, in partnership with the Educational Theatre Association. Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be the special guest, opening the event alongside Dr. Carla Diane Hayden, Librarian of Congress (the first woman in our nation's history to hold the coveted position). Additionally, the production is excited to present DemocracyWorks essay winner, high school senior Brannon Evans of Omaha, Nebraska, with a $10,000 college scholarship at a dinner the preceding evening, made possible through a grant to the Educational Theatre Foundation."

Daniels and some of the Broadway cast will be there that 1 day (April 2) for a special event -- they're not performing the play.

 

 

[DoTheDood]

Posted: 3/28/19 at 5:38pm

Yes, I did read it wrong, whoops. I assumed they were like both doing the show and having this talk, which I was honestly even confused by. But yes, thank you for the correction.

[bear88]

Posted: 10/1/22 at 7:13pm

I caught the touring production of To Kill a Mockingbird in San Francisco last night. I'll admit to feeling a certain ambivalence about seeing it, as I wondered how well an adaptation of the 1960 Harper Lee book (which everyone knows very well from the film) would really work now, especially with Aaron Sorkin - a white writer known for his glib dialogue - doing the book. I read enough favorable reviews to overcome my doubts and ended up with a second-row seat (though it was off to the side).

I left still feeling ambivalent, though I'm glad I saw it. First, there was the audience. It was a pretty packed house, and they were a really enthusiastic bunch. Richard Thomas, who plays Atticus, got applause just for walking onto the stage. He got bigger applause for his doomed closing argument. Calpurnia got huge applause for a monologue calling out Atticus' belief in his white neighbors. I have been to shows that I have disliked because they were too busy congratulating the audience and letting them feel superior. But in this case, the audience seemed to be missing the point.

As played by Thomas, Atticus Finch is a fool. He's probably always been a fool, but Thomas' earnest naivete and misunderstanding of the people in his community kept jarring me. Of course, he wasn't completely delusional, knowing enough to go the local jail when Robinson was moved there, prompting the confrontation at which Scout (played by Melanie Moore) recognizes one of the men in the mob (a client of her father's) and shames him into leaving. But I kept thinking: You're a bad lawyer, made all the worse by your overconfidence that evidence was going to matter. The judge who pushed him into the taking the case to trial wasn't doing Tom Robinson any favors either.

I am curious if Jeff Daniels or other actors played Finch this way on Broadway. Thomas, who I have seen on stage before in The Humans, does more obvious "acting" in this role, in part because the courtroom confrontations and rapid-fire exchanges call for a showier type of performance. And as the audience made clear from beginning to end, he was playing Atticus Finch.

Sorkin's quick dialogue and meta commentary by the children kept the play moving. Director Bartlett Sher uses the stage well. There are two Black characters with speaking roles (Calpurnia and Tom Robinson), beefed up from the novel, but it still feels terribly inadequate. One is pointed but wise, the other is a dignified victim, and we've seen that before, It's not the actors' fault: Jacqueline Williams and Yaegel Welch are both excellent.

The standout performer for me, especially from my close vantage point, was Arianna Gayle Stucki, who according to the program was making her professional debut as Mayella Ewell. As the 19-year-old accuser who's also a victim of her father, Stucki gives a raw performance that peaks during her cross-examination and lays bare - in a way the rest of the play does not - the poison of racism.

Sorkin's shift to emphasizing the trial and its consequences renders the entire Boo Radley subplot kind of pointless, especially as it wraps up the story. Perhaps it serves a purpose in showing the town's white leaders will always protect their own, and that Saint Atticus - and the adult Scout - will go along with it. The play, though perhaps not intended as such, is an indictment of the criminal justice system. Such a system is only comprised of the people in it, and if they're rotten or deluded in thinking that it will work well on its own, the outcome will always be injustice. 

One stray note: The actress who plays Mrs. Henry DuBose, the bigoted neighbor whose camelia bushes are beheaded by Jem, is played on the tour by Mary Badham, who won an Academy Award nomination at age 10 for playing Scout in the 1962 film version. She does a fine job in the small role.