Scout's Honour
To Kill a Mockingbird (Wyndham's Theatre) Guest Review by Dr Terror
It both intrigues and embarrasses me when I think back on the stuff I hated at school which I now find completely fascinating: history, physics, Shakespeare ...these bored me rigid. Partly, it was the teachers, those useless losers who can suck the joy out of any subject and hurl its anaemic husk in your face. But I can't just blame them. Colonel Geoff Brice, an old-school buffer and prominent Freemason who looked more like Alfred Hitchcock than Mr Chips, long dead no doubt, tried to get us to read John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos because (I am now convinced) he genuinely believed we would enjoy it.
'What's this shit now?' we asked each other, not taking the bait. Now, The Village of the Damned, the film that sprang from the book, is one of my favourites. What do kids know, eh?
I mention this in case you 'did' To Kill a Mockingbird at school and haven't given 'the Great American Novel' much thought since then. How do you remember it? A bit earnest? A bit worthy? A bit dull? If that's your position, I can't urge you strongly enough to see this production and reconnect with what is a remarkable work. Especially by a Yank.
Harper Lee is aided and abetted here by Aaron Sorkin's masterful adaption. I had forgotten just how FUNNY so much of it is, especially as the three kids, Scout, Jem and Dill, use the long hot summer to try and make sense of a cruel and unjust world. The audience was frequently in stitches. Not too shabby for a play featuring rape, incest, paedophilia, racist violence, ritual execution, perjury and murder.
The ensemble cast is perfect, standouts including Dylan Malyn as Dill, David Kennedy as Link Deas and, of course, Richard Coyle as Atticus Finch. Coyle's Finch is a little less straight-laced than Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning performance: a little less polished and with more of a twinkle in his eye. I liked it better (while not taking anything away from Peck).
Everything about this production is perfect. Everything, that is, apart from the unfortunate coincidence of the accused character's (innocent, framed) name being Tom Robinson. At least it wasn't Tommy.