REVIEW: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Caroline Rosenblum and Kathleen McCall in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of To Kill a Mockingbird. Photo by Terry Shapiro

Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better novel than Christopher Sergel's stage adaptation, but only because the conventions and point of view of the novel don't always translate well to a fixed space and a two and a half hour time span. Even so, the play, presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company and directed by Sabin Epstein, communicates effectively as drama, and adds a few surprising twists.

The novel relates seemingly unrelated events during ten-year-old Scout's summer, involving small town life in the south: a reclusive neighbor, a rabid dog on the loose, a new boy in the neighborhood, and the story's crowning sequence: Scout's attorney father Atticus' doomed attempt to protect and defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman.

The Gregory Peck film version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" came out in 1962, just two years after the novel was published, so both were ideally situated to become influential statements during the civil rights movement. So much so, that many people think of this story as a tragic but inspiring courtroom drama centered around a progressive, heroic, crusading lawyer.

The DCTC's production takes a different approach. My impression of the directorial choices made by Epstein, is that Scout's summer was memorable not because it was so meaningful and socially significant, but because the trauma each character suffered warped or deformed them in some way. In my opinion, this production emphasizes not the nobility of the characters and struggle for respect and dignity, but the long-lasting damage caused to the people who suffered through an ugly time.

No real, larger good prevails. It's an essentially sad and pessimistic interpretation, a bitter but valid pill, true to the material. There's more Tennessee Williams in this production than Arthur Miller.

John Hutton looks and sounds a lot like Gregory Peck, and has the heroic stature, but this Atticus is ashamed of his military service, fails to defend his children from a verbally abusive neighbor or hateful townfolk, is reluctant to take up arms even as a rabid dog threatens his children, and accepts the appointment to defend an innocent man with reluctant resignation. On several occasions he places himself as a sacrificial shield in front of angry and violent people, but offers no resistance. In fact, his daughter has to use her own wits to rescue him from being overrun by a lynch mob. His reputation with the white community is perhaps permanently ruined, and the black preacher's qualified praise for him is that "no one else could keep a jury out that long."

The three children in the story are severely damaged by their experiences. Scout's brother's arm is broken so badly that it becomes stunted. The new boy (who in real life was Truman Capote) develops a morbid fascination with deviant and criminal personalities, and Scout suffers a broken leg and psychological trauma that sets her on course toward a mental breakdown.

The disintegration of Scout's sanity is especially evident in the emphasis given on the narrator, Jean Louise Finch (ably played by Kathleen McCall), who is the adult Scout remembering the events of her childhood. Jean Louise doesn't just relate the past events, as in most memory plays. She relives the painful experiences as if they are happening to her again and again. The narrator is not allowed any aesthetic distance. During the climactic trial scene, the young Scout is tucked way upstage, on a balcony and behind a tree, but Jean Louise is right beside her father, helpless and agonized.

In a brilliantly insightful but desperately sad moment, Jean Louise can't even tell the audience what eventually happened to her father. She breaks down and is unable to continue to catharsis. She can't work through the experience, and becomes stuck in her pain. But then her childhood self takes her by the hand and leads her into the home of her memory. She becomes a recluse, like Boo Radley, incapacitated, unable to step out into the light, or move on with her life.

In the healing ministry, we understand that people who have suffered severe emotional wounds continue to feel the pain of years past -- even if the abuser is long dead -- as if it's happening right now. This is the case of Jean Louise.Telling the story over again for the audience doesn't make it any better for her. Then I realized that the cast will repeat this performance many times, and with each repetition they will have to go through the pain as if for the first time. What a profoundly sad way for art to imitate life.

Harper Lee described herself as inherently shy and never comfortable in the limelight. She never completed another novel. Many of the characters and scenes in "To Kill a Mockingbird" are based on or adapted from actual people and events in her life. It doesn't take much of a leap to imagine that this powerful production strikes closer to the unbearable truth than the book and film's heroic, noble reputation.

The Denver Center Theatre Company's production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" plays at the Stage Theatre through October 30. Call 303-893-4100 for tickets, or visit www.denvercenter.org.