Mockingbird message still packing a punch

AFTER 36 hours without sleep, jet lag, and a baggage catastrophe (my own fault, worse luck) did i really want to spend two hours and 45 minutes watching yet another stage version of harper lee’s landmark novel To Kill a mockingbird?

Well i’m glad i did, because what i witnessed on the stage of the Sam S. Shubert Theatre on West 44th Street, in the heart of Broadway, on Wednesday night will stay with me for ever.

i am well acquainted with the story of atticus Finch, the fictional alabama country lawyer called on to defend Tom Robinson, a black farm labourer falsely accused of raping a young white woman.it’s set in 1931 and told from the perspective of atticus’s young daughter Scout, son Jem and their friend Dill harris. adult actors Celia Keenan-Bolger, Will Pullen and Gideon Glick play them, respectively, and after 20 seconds you forget they’re not children. Jeff Daniels, (below) plays atticus, and Gbenga akinnagbe takes the role of Tom. The story, adapted by aaron Sorkin and directed by Bartlett Sher, crackles with electricity, thanks in part to some new lines penned by Sorkin for laTanya Richardson Jackson, who plays the indispensable housekeeper Calpurnia. This version captured an unease i occasionally feel about race in the UK and in Trump’s america, and felt as fresh now in its exposure of racism as the day it was written, nearly 60 years ago. The work, produced by Scott Rudin, is the biggest purely american (an important distinction) hit play in new York. it will undoubtedly come to london (in fact, there was a top West End producer sitting behind me), but not for a couple of years. When it does, though, it must be seen.