Aaron Sorkin’s revelatory adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird blazingly captures the zeitgeist

This utterly riveting and revelatory staging of one of the best-known, but also most dustily familiar, of 20th-century American literary classics, was initially announced in 2016, and premiered on Broadway in 2018.

That means it pre-dated the murder of George Floyd, and attendant uproar about race relations in America and elsewhere, but it immediately did phenomenally well, even without that context. Prior to opening, it had taken $22m in advance sales. That’s a testament to the reverence in which the 1960 book is held, the star power too of Jeff Daniels, who was cast as the time-honoured model of integrity, Atticus Finch, the Alabaman lawyer who takes on local forces of Depression Era racism to defend an innocent black man (Tom Robinson) accused of raping a poor white woman.

Audiences would have been further re-assured by the pedigree of the adaptor, Aaron Sorkin: a dab hand at legal dramas (A Few Good Men, The Trial of the Chicago 7). The bubbling controversy about his version – a real-life legal wrangle taking place in 2018 between the producers and the estate of Harper Lee, over divergences between the novel and its fresh re-telling – added to the building sense of “event”.

Watching it from the vantage of 2022, though, it’s clear that the piece is more than just classily cast (in this case, Rafe Spall takes the lead), well-wrought and boasting talking-point elements. It blazingly captures the zeitgeist, so that what remains firmly in period is also urgent, the furore about Floyd reinforcing its percipience.

Albeit taking intelligent liberties to do so – not least prising the narrative viewpoint away from Finch’s admiring young daughter Scout, bleeding the pivotal trial right across the action instead of holding it back for the second half, and giving a greater voice to the black characters – Sorkin’s account argues the case for the core complexity of To Kill a Mockingbird as never before. The usual court-room satisfaction of watching Finch fight his client’s case, demolishing the prosecution, prevails. But the upshot of the jury decision resonates in a way that rebounds as much on Finch as on the community.

Put simply, we may be rooting for him, but, in fact, he too is in the dock. What value is a noble-minded faith in “the system”, if the system is structured on the kind of supremacism we hear in its ugliest form in the brazen racism of the alleged victim, Mayella Ewell and her violent father, Bob? The N-word is used in vicious abundance, and Sorkin has woven in extreme alt-right sentiments found on Breitbart.

In Sorkin’s reading, Finch dissuades Robinson from a guilty plea that would entail a lengthy prison sentence but no more. Our hero confidently presses ahead to uphold his client’s innocence. And in so doing reveals his own ignorance about the unswerving prejudice of the world as Robinson and other African-Americans – like Finch’s household cook, Calpurnia – experience it. The brilliance of this approach is registered in the sophistication of Spall’s performance, which gives us a hypnotic understated poise and lofty cogitation but suggests, for all his impassioned appeals for societal change, that he’s too much at one remove .

The near three hours fly by. Directed by Bartlett Sher, this is one of those evenings when it’s impossible to see the joins between the vision of the script and the intricacy of the staging. Every characterisation is beautifully rendered amid Miriam Buether’s derelict warehouse space, allowing transitions around the fictional town of Maycomb.

Gwyneth Keyworth’s likeably scowling and bold Scout shares the darting narration with her brother Jem – Harry Redding making an astonishing professional debut of fresh-faced self-possession, with David Moorst impeccable as their gawkily genial pal Dill. There’s comedy afoot when the trio are around, but their loss of innocence is freighted with pathos.

Jude Owusu’s solemn, sorrowful Tom Robinson breaks your heart, and Pamela Nomvete’s Calpurnia speaks volumes with every reproachful questioning look. Credit where it’s due: Poppy Lee Friar almost steals the show with her snake-coiling and hissing turn as the malicious Mayella Ewell, while Patrick O’Kane is unforgettably full-blooded as her brutal, odious father. Watch out too for Harry Attwell as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley; did he kill Ewell? Over to you.

Booking until Aug 13; tokillamockingbird.co.uk