We came to New York to reunite with some friends and to see Jeff Daniels, as Atticus, in To Kill a Mockingbird.
[As a side note the two best meals I had that week were cooked by our friend Mitch Leibowitz (chickpeas first, then salmon) with honorable mention to the English Beef Stew at the Director’s Irish Pub on Thursday night].
The main course was Aaron Sorkin’s Mockingbird. I have to confess a little disappointment with his version of Harper Lee’s moving story of racism in the post-Depression deep South. A little too much Sorkin and too little Harper Lee.
If you were a fan of Sorkin’s Newsroom or West Wing you would recognize a certain plot line in his To Kill a Mockingbird. An Idealist meets the harsh reality of politics or southern poverty and becomes a hard-fighting pragmatist. I would argue that the novel is more understated and compassionate. That’s how it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize: with a broad humanitarian theme of “walking around inside another person’s skin.”
That theme is stated in the current Sorkin version of the novel, but it gets some opposition from a “fight for justice” theme that the novel promotes less. Jeff Daniels’ Atticus is a laidback country lawyer who gets angry after his epic trial and has a physical face-off with the over-played villain of the story, Bob Ewell. The result is an enlightened Atticus who is ready to take a few swings for justice, as his news director character, Will McAvoy, in Newsroom would have.
In the stage play Atticus begins from the premise that people are willing to be changed by a good trial argument. The evidence, that Bob Ewell was his daughter Mayell’s attacker and not the poor Black Tom Robinson, is overwhelming, Atticus shows uncharacteristic optimism going into the trial. His expectations do not match Harper Lee’s Atticus, who is the sober pessimist on all subjects and especially on the subject of changing the traditions of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus in the novel would never be carried away by a good case he had planned for a jury trial.
Sorkin’s Atticus, like President Bartlett on West Wing, believes in the system and the basic goodness of human beings. He is bitterly disillusioned by his defeat in the trial to save Tom Robinson from a rape conviction, and later has a physical confrontation with Bob Ewell, as Ewell baits him in front of Atticus’ house. It is an outbreak of pure anger, which you will not find in the novel version of the story. It appears that pure racism can only be opposed by the physical anger of righteous men in Aaron Sorkin’s world.
The overwhelming theme of Lee’s novel is that “you can’t a know man without walking around some time in his shoes.” Atticus spends a lot of time explaining the racism of Bob Ewell and John Cunningham to his children, so they don’t hate these “white trash” characters for their apparent disdain for Black folk. The novel is more about empathy than retaliation.
And the framing story around the novel is the reigning fear the children have for the reclusive Arthur (Boo) Radley, who at the end turns into their savior when they are attacked by Bob Ewell in a late night ambush. In the closing scene Scout and Jem are stricken for their suspicion and fear of Boo and reach out to him gratefully for his rescue from a murderer. Boo, even though he is a white privileged character, has become the victim of prejudice in the novel, and the conclusive example of the need to “walk around in man’s shoes.”
In the play, what the audience most remembers is the closing argument in the courtroom from Jeff Daniels, as he challenges us to rise against prejudice wherever we find it. The final words of the play are the same as those we hear at the beginning when the judge enters the courtroom, “All rise.” Aaron Sorkin is less committed to understatement and empathy than Harper Lee.
I love Jeff Daniels, so it pains me to say he was not cast correctly to play an aging, frail attorney, who keeps many of his opinions to himself, and who reveals his sharpshooting skills only in a desperate emergency. In the novel he is touted as “One-shot” Finch, but we only know this because a rabid dog is charging him and the sheriff has come to the scene without his distance glasses. After Atticus nails the dog with one shot, he never picks up a gun again in the story, even when Bob Ewell shows up armed at his house. Atticus believes in the struggle, but it is a non-violent struggle.
Daniels cannot conceal his broad shoulders and more solid build, so he cannot faithfully represent the more lanky Finch, who constantly asserts he is too old for physical activities in the novel. The actor I have always considered for Atticus is “Law and Order’s” Sam Waterson, who played a similar character to Atticus on a television ripoff of Mockingbird “I’ll Fly Away.” Waterson has the shaky voice and lean build needed for the character of Atticus, who is superficially weak, but powerful in conviction and determination. Daniels is good with the wry humor, but he is an imposing figure, no matter how you dress him, a character it is hard to underestimate.
I also quibble with the decision to assign adults to the roles of Scout, Jem and Dill. In the novel they are profound young people, but often act childishly. The actors who play them, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Hunter Parrish, and Noah Robbins, all convey their roles effectively, but the wisdom, the “out of the mouths of babes” effect that Harper Lee uses to effect in the novel, is less striking coming out of the mouths of adults. The critical scene, where Atticus sits guard outside the jail and the hooded clan members show up to lynch Tom Robinson, conveys less of the vulnerability of the children who arrive to protect Atticus, partly because it is hard to see them as vulnerable children. Keenan-Bolger, who plays Scout, is almost as tall as Mr.Cunningham, ring leader of the Klansmen.
I hate reviewers who complain that a play is not a successful rendition of the book, so it is not fair for me to carp about this play, which, after all, is effective as an Aaron Sorkin version. My problem is I like the Harper Lee version better. I like the understatement and the broad theme of learning to understand the aliens in our lives. The final scene where Boo Radley is unmasked and becomes the rescuer instead of the monster makes more sense in the novel than the play. I wish Aaron Sorkin was more willing to walk around in the shoes of the original Atticus and his creator, Harper Lee.
But Sorkin has a message he is not willing to understate: a passion for justice needs a determined aggression. The titular theme of the novel “It is a sin to kill a mockingbird,” is not assertive enough in Sorkin’s universe.