Mockingbird play poised to make record profit

A stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird is on course to become the most profitable American play in the history of Broadway.

Harper Lee’s novel, adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin, has regularly made up to US$1.7 million (NZ$2.5m) a week since it opened in December.

By last Sunday ticket sales totalled US$33.4 million and the show appears to be only a few weeks shy of breaking the US$37.5 million record set by a revival in 2014 of the Terrence McNally comedy It’s Only A Play.

The audiences that have filled the Shubert Theatre on Broadway have included supreme court justices and politicians including Bill and Hillary Clinton. The play was even watched by a grandson of AC Lee, the Alabama lawyer and father of Harper Lee.

A C Lee is believed to have been the model for Atticus Finch, the hero of the novel, played on stage by Jeff Daniels.

Sorkin, 57, has a distinctive style, devising the television series The West Wing and winning an Oscar for his screenplay The Social Network.

He originally drafted a cautious adaptation of Lee’s novel for Scott Rudin, the theatre and film producer. ‘‘It was like a greatest hits album made by a cover band,’’ he said in a radio interview before Christmas.

Rudin encouraged him to restructure the tale, turning it from a childhood coming-of-age story to a court drama focused on the father. In this narrative, Atticus Finch changed from a saintly figure to a man who sought to see the best in his neighbours but found them willing to condemn an innocent black man to death.

Sorkin told The Hollywood Reporter: ‘‘Atticus keeps repeating his mantra: ‘There’s goodness in everyone. All you have to do is crawl around in someone else’s skin.’ Throughout the book he keeps excusing inexcusable racism from his neighbours.’’

He said that his retelling was affected by the white supremacist rally in Virginia in 2017 that descended into violence and US President Donald Trump’s statement that there were ‘‘very fine people on both sides’’.