‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ play is not quite so much black and white

Of course you know “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Everyone knows “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

And yet, there are surprises in store for audiences at the Broadway in Atlanta production national tour opening at the Fox on May 7. Harper Lee’s oh-so-familiar tale of the Jim Crow South in the 1930s has been refigured and rejiggered by playwright Aaron Sorkin, best known for TV’s “The West Wing” on his 30-year resume.

“Aaron was aware of how we view these things through different lenses in different periods,” says Richard Thomas, now a youthful 72 and playing Atticus, but forever John-Boy Walton to TV viewers of a certain age.

Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Credit: Julieta Cervantes

“The first thing he did was to take Atticus Finch off the pedestal. He’s also given Atticus a sense of humor,” he adds. “The darkness of the drama is leavened by the lightness of the humor.”

In Lee’s novel, the trial of Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape by a white woman, is a mere two chapters. In the play, it is the main dramatic engine, with beefed-up, more nuanced roles for Black characters Robinson and the Finch family housekeeper Calpurnia.

“He’s given the Black characters a little more agency and a little more voice,” says Yaegel T. Welch, the Morehouse College grad who plays Tom. “Calpurnia gives more perspective from the Black community, and that elevates the heart of the story,” he adds.

The result updates some of the dated perspectives of Lee’s novel (and the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck that many consider one of the best movie adaptations of a novel ever made), and crushed Broadway when it opened in 2018. It is the highest-grossing American play (non-musical) in Broadway history, and the national tour is the highest-grossing non-musical tour. (It’s only the second non-musical show from Broadway in Atlanta in the last 10 years.)

Both Thomas and Welch first read the novel, as do nearly all Americans, as youngsters. “It’s interesting as an example of a book that is clearly not a YA novel, not a kids’ book,” says Thomas, “but it’s a book that’s great for young people at that age cause that’s the age where we’re developing a social consciousness and a sense of social fairness.”

Adds Welch, “The story is not perfect, but it was perfect for its time. A lot of Black people say that was their favorite book as a kid. It’s a very generous and bold thing that Harper Lee did to be the vessel for this story. In 1960 this was a very, very bold story.”

Credit: Courtesy photo / Julieta Cervantes

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The book and movie have been criticized in recent years as being part of, if not the greatest example of, the “white savior” approach to writing fiction about civil rights. Part of Sorkin’s adaptation, which was done with permission of Lee’s estate, is an attempt to address that.

“The book is our story but told through the lens of how it affects a white guy,” says Welch, “But that’s a useful tool because racism does affect white people too. The book has created so many civil rights lawyers and people who want to fight social injustice. They’re inspired by Atticus Finch.”

Both actors have Atlanta connections. Thomas lived in Atlanta several years ago when filming a supporting role in the Netflix drama “Ozark.” Welch grew up in the Los Angeles area and when it came time to apply to college had never heard the acronym HBCU until a friend told him what they were. He wanted to study theater and found out Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson had attended Morehouse, and that his favorite sitcom “A Different World” had been taped nearby at Spelman College. So he became a Morehouse Man.

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“Southern audiences are particularly warm and friendly” toward the play,” says Thomas. “They get the material in a way. They feel a sense of ownership. You go to the Northeast and they have an idea about the South rather than it being their story.”

Ultimately, Welch says, he hopes what people realize from this play is that “you don’t have to be an immigrant to care about the rights of immigrants; you don’t have to be queer to care about the rights of queer people; you don’t have to be Black to care about the rights of Black people.

“You just have to be an empathetic person.”