Forget memories of Gregory Peck, and even the original novel for that matter: this production of To Kill A Mockingbird from US director Bartlett Sher, and starring Rafe Spall as Atticus Finch, blows most of the uncomfortable cobwebs off Harper Lee’s classic novel about a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama.
For years the novel has been compromised by the story’s whiff of white saviour complex and the fact a black man’s story is told entirely through the perspective of a white girl.
Aaron Sorkin’s sparky, energetic adaptation – a hit on Broadway – can’t entirely do away with both difficulties, but it does offer an invigorating response: not only does Scout share narrating duties with her more dissenting brother Jem but Finch’s famed insistence on seeing the good in everyone is persuasively presented as a dangerous form of liberal entitlement.
Equally importantly perhaps, Sher’s almost tangibly atmospheric production is pleasingly old fashioned: it’s beautifully acted, handsomely presented, and slickly and unafraid to offer a strong meaty moral message.
Spall is just terrific as the lawyer who has a strong idea about who really raped the much-abused young white girl Mayella, radiating nimble wit and easy charisma, but also affecting the faintest air of progressive superiority in his natty white linen suit and flaunted principle.
Pamela Nomvete shines in the beefed up role of Calpurnia, the Finches’ black maid who in the evening’s most powerful moment accuses Finch of moral appeasement; Patrick O’Kane’s Bob Ewell is a slithery, all too plausible white supremacist straight out of Trump’s America while Jude Owusu as the falsely accused Tom Robinson does a huge amount with a part that, despite everything, still feels too small.
Yet this is a stirring satisfying evening that skewers several assumptions during its three-hour running time, most bitterly perhaps Finch’s dogged faith in the workings of American justice.
To Kill A Mockingbird is at the Gielgud Theatre, London.
