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Stage Review: 'Mockingbird' re-creates past social issues for youth
Saturday, October 14, 2000 By Walter Evert
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a deeply moving, sometimes harrowing, dramatic experience. Its subject is racial prejudice in the 1930s South -- which immediately brings ethnic caricatures to mind. And, yes, there is that. But underlying it all is the affirmation that, even in the heart of darkness there can be light, as long as one or two good people stand firm for the right. Not that right always triumphs.
Adapted by Christopher Sergel from Harper Lee's novel, much of the action is in the form of a court trial, the issue of which is whether Tom Robinson (Wali Jamal Abdualiah), hitherto known as a decent and dependable black handyman, sexually molested Mayella Ewell (Maura McCarthy), a dubious woman whom we are clearly to understand as white trash.
Atticus Finch (Jeff Howell) is the defense attorney, an intelligent and decent man who, perhaps for those reasons, has never prospered in this benighted setting. Intermittently on stage, throughout, are his two children, Scout (Sarah Perconte) and Jem (Daniel Harrold). Their innocence, within the matrix of an often corrupt and sometimes sordid society, suggests either the possibility of hope for the future or the reflection, on our part, that all these hypocritical adults were the Scouts and Jems of their own earlier times. There's a lot of what has been called Southern Gothic here.
So, what does all this have to do with the title, "To Kill a Mockingbird"? Perhaps this. As we see in the opening scene, the boy, Jem, likes to kill birds with his BB gun but is told never to kill mockingbirds -- They do no harm to anyone and bring beauty into the world. Looking back on the play, one is tempted to see that as a neat fit with one of the characters.
Prime Stage Theatre's target audience is essentially teen-agers, and this play is a good choice to broaden their social awareness and introduce them to some of the complexities of adulthood. Younger children probably wouldn't understand some of the play's frankness or be able to assess the complexity of its social issues.
For the rest of us, it's solid dramatic meat. All of the large cast of 19 are excellent, especially Linda Haston, McCarthy, Abdulaliah, and Howell. Howell is in action pretty much throughout, vigorously pacing and embodying the moral force of the whole.
Walter Evert is a free-lance drama critic for the Post-Gazette.
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Where: Prime Stage at Hazlett Theater, North Side.