To KILL a MOCKINGBIRD on B'wy with Ed Harris

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "To Kill a Mocking Bird" (1960) is an iconic literary work of American fiction.  The book was made into an Acad. Award winning film and is now a Broadway play.  It's a major undertaking transforming Lee's work to the stage while conveying its social impact without preaching or convoluting the integrity of the novel.  American playwright Aaron Sorkin captures Lee's multi-layered racial & social commentary alongside the coming of age stories of Scout (Nina Grollman) & her brother Jem (Nick Robinson) growing up in AL in 1934.  Sorkin was snubbed for his adaption by the Tonys.  Sorkin has received Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Writer Guild awards and nominations for his expansive work in multiple mediums.  Somehow he was sorely overlooked for "Mockingbird."  Racism, mob mentality and lynchings portrayed in the novel are painfully enacted on stage.  Atticus (Ed Harris), Calpurnia (Lisagay Hamilton) and the falsely accused Tom Robinson (Kyle Scatliffe) play their courageous and sympathetic roles brilliantly.  Calpurnia's candid repartee with Atticus cuts through the permeated myth that racism is something found only in caricatures of the most contemptible white people in the deep south in decades past.  Atticus tells Scout "for the poor, white uneducated affronted by the Civil War 70 years prior, it feels but like yesterday."  Of course, this resonates with the pernicious, systemic  racial hatred that plagues our nation today.  We must acknowledge our painful history, and confront heinous events distilled such as the Greenwood Massacre in 1921, the 5,000 lynching from 1882-1986, the indelible image of Emmett Till in his casket and marchers attacked during the civil rights era and confront our present malaise of mass incarceration & inhumane & unjust sentencing of men & youth mainly of color.  Bryan Stevenson's auto-biography "Just Mercy" depicts the framing of black men put on death row that persists.  Moreover, the killings of unarmed black men whose heinous murders by whites who are not held responsible.  This is to say "To Kill a Mockingbird" is still relevant and should resonate with audiences.  It must be noted the subtler lessons of compassion & empathy which are as important, if not more powerful.  Scout & Jem's epiphanies of damaging, flawed pre-judging of & the need for empathy "inside someone's skin" are omnipotent.