The touring production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is still Harper Lee's bestselling story but fans of Aaron Sorkin will be glad to hear it sounds like him.
The "West Wing" creator's smartest idea was divvying up the narration among the child characters: Scout (a stand-in for Lee), brother Jem and offbeat pal Dill (based on Lee's friend Truman Capote). They're played by adults, which immediately tells us "Mockingbird" is a memory play in which grown-ups reflect on past events and consider how their views have changed. Especially, it's about their changing views of protagonist Atticus Finch (played with warmth and complexity by "The Waltons" veteran Richard Thomas).
Atticus remains the hero of "Mockingbird," in which he takes on the thankless case — because it's the South in 1934 — of defending Tom Robinson (Yaegel T. Welch), a Black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman named Mayella. Half of the play takes place in court, as Atticus and his opponent question witnesses. That stuff is right in Sorkin's wheelhouse and it plays out with electrifying tension, other than a jarring scene where timid, uneducated Mayella suddenly seems to become a crackpot podcaster, singing the praises of white supremacy.
Sorkin also gives agency to Calpurnia, the Finches' maid. At their house, she's always in the background, folding clothes or making dinner. But she's also the one who points out Atticus' failings, which include vanity and an unwillingness to acknowledge that the feelings of some people deserve extra consideration. If the book is about Scout's eyes opening to how the world works, the play is as much about that happening to Atticus. The central metaphor — that it's a sin to kill an innocent mockingbird — is usually interpreted as a reference to Tom but it's also worth noting that finches are zoological relatives of mockingbirds.
Calpurnia, authoritatively played on opening night by understudy Dorcas Sowunmi, calls out what we now label microaggressions. That's essential to how this "Mockingbird" re-evaluates Lee because it takes Atticus off the book's pedestal, noting that his privileged view of equality is blind to the fact that some people — including Tom, including Calpurnia — were nowhere near equal in the Alabama of the 1930s.
One criticism of Lee is that she shifts her attention from the shocking injustice of Tom's story to the cozier dealings of the Finches. That still happens in this "Mockingbird," but Sorkin inserts a dreamy image into the finale to underscore what this story is, or at least should be, about.
A few scenes get speech-y, in the way Sorkin's work can, and I wish he had hung onto Lee's graceful closing line. Melanie Moore's slightly too emphatic Scout has a wobbly Alabama accent (intriguingly, the movie's Oscar-nominated Scout, Mary Badham, plays a neighbor whom Scout calls "the meanest woman ever accidentally created by the hand of God").
But these are quibbles. What's noteworthy about this "Mockingbird" is that it preserves what's great about the book while also making it feel new.
'To Kill a Mockingbird'
Who: By Aaron Sorkin, adapted from Harper Lee's novel. Directed by Bartlett Sher.
When: 7:30 Wed. & Thu., 8 p.m. Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat., 1 & 6:30 p.m. Sun.
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.
Tickets: $39-$149, hennepintheatretrust.org.
