Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” is very much in the news with the publication of “Go Set A Watchman,” the reclusive author’s follow-up to her literary classic. The new novel, which involves several of the characters from her previous work, shot to the top of the best-seller lists, understandable insofar as “To Kill A Mockingbird” has sold 40 million copies since it was first published in July of 1960.What is less known is that in 1991 a stage adaptation of the novel by Christopher Sergel premiered at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, a version created with the intent to be licensed to schools and community theaters but which has since become somewhat ubiquitous at regional theaters. The popular title had a high-profile 2009 production at the Hartford Stage and just ended an acclaimed run at London’s Barbican Theatre with Robert Sean Leonard in the role of Atticus Finch, the noble widower and lawyer called upon to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in Depression-era Alabama. Can a Broadway mounting be far behind?Indeed, there was just that kind of chatter around the Hartford Stage production, directed by Michael Wilson, with Jeffrey Richards, one of Broadway’s most prolific and prestigious producers, named as one of those most involved in a transfer. It’s not hard to see why he was attracted to the property. The story is extremely well known, the courtroom setting is ideal for adaptation to the stage, and Sergel’s work relies heavily — and to its benefit — on Horton Foote’s Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1962 film version, which also won the Academy Award for Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch.In fact, at Hartford, Foote’s daughter, Hallie Foote, played the role of Atticus Finch’s daughter Jean Louise, nicknamed “Scout,” as an adult looking back on the dramatic events that marked her coming-of-age as well as that of her older brother, 10-year-old Jem, and their friend Dill, said to be based on the writer Truman Capote, a childhood friend of Lee. Anita Gates, reviewing in the New York Times, put her finger on what might give a producer pause when it comes to a Broadway production: “There are 20 characters, as well as townspeople and neighbors,” wrote Gates. “Four of them have to be played by child actors (and two of those, Jem and Scout, are lead characters) … These are not high-strung, genteel Tennessee Williams characters; the people of Maycomb, white and black, are dirt-poor Depression-era Southerners.”The question of whether or not there can be revisions to the script, including boiling down the cast to a fiscally manageable size, appear to reside with two estates. Sergel, who died in 1993, held the copyright on the play, and Harper Lee is famous for being extremely protective of her beloved novel. Lee, now 89, is in an assisted-living facility in her native Monroeville, Alabama — fictionalized as Maycomb County in the novel — and is said by some close friends to have diminished mental capacity.Any producer interested in mounting a Broadway production would presumably have to be in consultation with Tonja B. Carter, the lawyer who has taken over the author’s day-to-day affairs since the death of Lee’s sister, Alice, last November. In fact, it was Ms. Carter who discovered the manuscript for “Go Tell A Watchman,” the circumstances around which have generated some controversy.The timing would seem perfect for a Broadway production with Robert Sean Leonard reprising his role as Atticus Finch. The performance received strongly positive reviews, as did Timothy Sheader’s production, which originated in 2013 at London’s Regent Park open-air theater. Leonard, a mainstay of Broadway and off-Broadway theater, has become more of a marquee name through his prominent role in the television series “House M.D.” And with polls showing that most Americans feel that race relations have become more troublesome in recent times, “To Kill A Mockingbird” on Broadway might be a remedial as well as entertaining.
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