Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars
The stars and stripes stands unassumingly unfurled throughout the courtroom scenes of Bartlett Sher’s production of West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin’s take on Harper Lee’s much loved novel. The flag may never impose, but, given the story’s themes of institutionalised racism, justice, truth and the American way, its silent symbolism is hard to ignore.
Lee’s novel tells how a young black man in small town Alabama named Tom Robinson is found guilty of raping Mayella Ewell, the daughter of local bigot Bob Ewell, despite it being a physical impossibility. It may be set in the 1930s, but was published in 1960, just as the civil rights movement was coming to the fore. Sorkin retains the original setting, but in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the rise of the American right, its resonances today loom ever larger.
Sorkin dovetails the action between the courtroom and the outside porch of Atticus Finch, the widowed property lawyer who is tasked to defend Robinson. This is framed by Atticus’ two children, Scout and Jem, and their friend Dill, who become a three-headed narrator-chorus who speak out front and watch over the court scenes from the sidelines as rough justice is doled out.
The effect of this is to resemble a giant show-and-tell as the children reveal what they did last summer. This puts Anna Lenden as Scout at the play’s centre as with the book, with Gabriel Scott as Jem and Dylan Malyn's Dill acting as effective foils for what is in part a rites of passage as the children experience the pains of injustice and loss first hand.
The world they recall becomes real by way of Miriam Buether’s busy set of doors, windows and courtroom benches that whizz in and out. Here, Atticus – played by John J. O’Hagan stepping in heroically for Richard Coyle - is a quiet liberal and reluctant hero who puts himself in the firing line to defend Tom, played by Aaron Shosanya with a sense of suppressed dignity in the face of white society’s frame-up.
For all the sharply honed wit in some of Sorkin’s lines, there is a necessary ugliness too in some of the language used. When Evie Hargreaves’ Mayella is put in the dock to back up her claims about Tom, the mix of feral anger and hand-me-down ignorance that fuels the litany of hate she spews out is a terrifyingly familiar representation of a poverty stricken underclass exploited by bullies to find scapegoats to blame for their condition. Similarly, when a crowd of masked men led by Oscar Pearce as Ewell turn up at the courthouse where Atticus has set up camp outside Tom’s cell to protect him, it is a stark illustration of mob rule based on fear, loathing and fake news.
Beyond all this, it takes Andrea Davy’s maid Calpurnia to tell Atticus some home truths. Similarly, when Harry Attwell’s local bogeyman Boo Radley finally shows up, his accidental eye for an eye actions are an example of those on the margins saving the day in a way that Atticus can’t, however much he tries to do right. Having already been a hit on Broadway and the West End, Sorkin and Sher’s epic rendition of Lee’s story goes beyond flag waving to get to the uncomfortable truth of how everyday prejudices can be emboldened with tragic results, and how, despite this, basic human decency and a sense of real justice can somehow survive beyond it.
The Herald, October 23rd 2025
ends
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