To Kill A Mockingbird Review

I viewed To Kill A Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin, on October 11th 2019 at the Shubert theater on Broadway. Scout Finch was played by Celia Keenan-Bolger, her father Atticus was played by Jeff Daniels, another important character was Jem Finch, Atticus’s son played by Will Pullen. This play was mainly about racism in Alabama during the 1960s. During the play a man named Tom Robinson was wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. The lawyer assigned to defend him in court was Atticus Finch, the father of two children, Jean Louise (Scout) and Jem. The play is mainly about Atticus’s defence of Tom Robinson and the town’s racist opinions in general, and in regards to Tom Robinson’s trial. This trial had an effect on the whole town and both Jem and Scout had negative interactions with people that did not believe in the same things as Atticus. In the end even though all of the evidence is in Tom Robinsons favor he is still convicted of rape due to the jury’s racist views.

This play highlighted many major themes, some of the most important ones included racism and good vs evil. Racism is the most obvious and prevalent theme throughout the play. It is mainly portrayed by the verdict of Tom Robinson’s trial. Most of the evidence showed that Tom Robinson was innocent. However, the jury still unanimously voted that Tom was guilty even though it was clear that he couldn’t have committed the crime. Good vs evil was illustrated throughout the show by showing the townspeople's reactions to Atticus (a white man) defending Tom (a black man). They found it a horrible crime to side with a black person even though Atticus was just aligning himself with the truth, instead of racially.

The set of To Kill a Mockingbird was very minimalistic and strategic, there weren’t any props/set pieces on stage that were not necessary. An important part of the setting was the Finch house. The set of the house however was not overdone, it was composed mainly of a deck that rolled onto the stage, windows that dropped from the ceiling, and benches that were on the deck. This was done because it was not necessarily important where they lived as much as what happened there. I think the producers used a minimalistic set because they wanted the audience to focus more on the meaningful conversations that took place at the house, rather than the house itself. The color scheme throughout the show was mostly tones of brown, grey and blue. This was shown in the costumes worn by the characters, and the sets. The director chose these colors because during the time period of the play these colors were mostly what people wore. The lighting throughout the show was interesting and was very important to the plot. Throughout the show, Scout, Jem and their friend Dill were often in places they shouldn’t have been, and the adults couldn’t see them there even though they were standing in plain sight. However, at some points during these types of scenes they would have lines that were supposed to narrate what was going on. To show that the audience could see the children, but the other actors onstage couldn’t, they used spotlights. I liked this technique a lot and it was clear to the audience what was happening during these parts of the show. For sound, specifically music, there were only two songs throughout the entire play. I think they did this because there were a lot of difficult ideas to understand throughout the production and they couldn’t have been portrayed effectively in a song.

The lighting, sound, costumes, and colors came together to create a coherent and smooth running production. Overall, these aspects of the production came together to create a somber and serious mood and atmosphere for the audience. The lack of music made the piece more serious and the dim lighting during monologues and in general throughout the production also contributed to the serious nature of the production. This made sense because the plot of the play was a serious subject matter and the set definitely echoed that.

Jean Louise and Atticus Finch were definitely highlighted the most throughout the play. This was done by giving them a lot of lines. These characters also spent a lot of time on stage, because most of the plot revolves around them. Scout and Atticus were the characters that I think changed the most throughout the play. As the play progressed Scout matured more as she learned more about the world around her and the views of people in the community. Atticus also changed throughout the play. This is because the trial of Tom Robinson altered how he looked at life and his job as a lawyer. Atticus and Scout’s change throughout the play naturally highlights them as characters.

Throughout the play Calpurnia (the Finch’s maid) and Atticus were positioned as very similar to each other. This is because they both had the same outlook on how unfair segregation and racism was in the South, which was not the case for most white southerners in that time period. Also, Calpurnia was a mother figure to Jem and Scout because their mother passed away. This meant that both Calpurnia and Atticus were united in their feelings about raising the children. Even though they did disagree on certain things throughout the play, they both still had similar ideals and core values. This was achieved because they had a lot of emotionally revealing conversations concerning their feelings about current events. For this piece I think that the director was trying to portray many complex themes through the lense of one family in that time period. He did this by making sure that when the characters were talking about racism and other themes, they were speaking about things that were universal to America at that time.

A powerful moment for me was when right after Atticus received the phone call that Tom Robinson had died. It stood out to me because most people in the audience knew what happened, but everyone, including Atticus didn’t want to say or hear it. I remember he paused after he hung up the phone before breaking the bad news to everyone. This built tension for the audience and made people think more deeply about the things that had led up to this event. For me Jeff Daniels who played Atticus Finch, was the best. This is because he changed his character very smoothly from being a father to his children, to a tough lawyer in the courthouse, to an understanding member of the community. Also, he had to convey some very powerful ideas in his monologues which I think he did extremely well. His costume and voice were both spot on and captured the essence of his personality and character.

Overall, I thought this production of To Kill A Mockingbird was very well done. I loved their interpretation of the story, the set design, and the choice of actors. I think that the rest of the audience enjoyed this production too because it seemed as if everyone was holding their breath to see what would happen next. I learned a lot about theater from watching this. My main takeaway is that how you portray a message is as important as the message itself, and silence to build tension can help reinforce a message.