Harper Lee would have turned 100 this year, and school districts are still pulling her 1960 novel off required reading lists. The Huntington brings it to the stage with Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the first regional staging following its Broadway, national tour and West End runs. Those who treasure the book, or the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, won’t be disappointed.
The essential story remains: Widowed lawyer Atticus Finch (Karl Kenzler) defends Tom Robinson (Rafael Jordan), a Black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman, while confronting racism in small-town Alabama. But this is no museum-piece retelling. Sorkin pushes the novel’s questions about justice into the present tense, while Calpurnia, the Finch family’s housekeeper, receives greater agency, embodied by Patrice Jean-Baptiste with power and grace.
The music that haunts Maycomb
The Huntington’s artistic director Loretta Greco directs nearly 30 actors and adds an inspired musical element. Ashley Frith, credited as musician and co-composer, remains onstage throughout, playing violin and lending an elegiac, keening voice at key moments. The effect is haunting without becoming intrusive.
Scout (Karen Killeen), Jem (Benjamin Izaak) and Dill (Andrew Stevens Purdy) get fewer childhood antics, and Boo Radley, the object of their fascination, appears briefly near the end. But the novel’s iconic Southern live oak looms large. Towering nearly 40 feet into the rafters (scenic design by Andrew Boyce), it becomes an ominous symbol of lynching.
Sorkin’s version unfolds primarily as a courtroom drama—his other big hit, A Few Good Men, returns to Broadway this fall. The trial’s disturbing highlight is Mayella Ewell, played by Jackie Scholl as a volatile ball of rage, shame, and fear. Her performance makes Mayella’s cruelty and vulnerability equally unsettling. Liam Craig’s Bob Ewell and the town racists lend the late-night confrontations palpable menace.
This Mockingbird honors a familiar story while making room for fresh perspectives on moral agency and “decency.” Sorkin hands Atticus a new line: “Trying to do the right thing is the right thing,” which resonates far beyond the theater’s walls. With Lee’s book still fighting for a place in classrooms a century after her birth, To Kill a Mockingbird sings loud and clear.
It wants better content.
Is ‘Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird’ worth seeing?
A century after Harper Lee’s birth, Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird finds that her questions about decency have only grown sharper, and Loretta Greco’s Huntington revival makes sure every one lands.
- Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston
- Notable performers: Karl Kenzler, Patrice Jean-Baptiste, Rafael Jordan, Karen Killeen, Andrew Stevens Purdy, Jackie Scholl
- Running time: 2 hours and 45 minutes, including intermission (confirm)
- Performances through November 8
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