To Kill a Mockingbird Review round-up at the Gielgud Theatre starring Rafe Spall ★★★★

"Harper Lee would approve of snappy Sorkin update"

"Rafe Spall is a dignified Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s smooth and confident adaptation, which finds modern-day resonances in the 1960 classic about racial injustice in the American south"

"The drama of the courtroom, as a whole, is when this production comes most fully alive, the testimonies of both Bob and Mayella Ewell (Patrick O’Kane and Poppy Lee Friar respectively, both sensational) are filled with tension, anger, betrayal and disbelief. There are modern-day resonances of Trump’s left-behinds in their characterisations that feel utterly real and uncontrived; both father and daughter sneer at Atticus’s intellectual elitism and could be today’s forgotten populists of the rust-belt."

"All rise for this powerfully uplifting theatrical event"

"Rafe Spall brings a vitality to the role of Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s fresh adaption of Harper Lee’s classic novel"

"All rise for a magnificent Mockingbird. Sheer emotion and moral force make this Broadway adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel about race, community and family a powerfully uplifting theatrical event."

"Aaron Sorkin’s revelatory adaptation blazingly captures the zeitgeist"

"Harper Lee's famous 1960 novel comes rivetingly to life at the Gielgud Theatre, with Rafe Spall hypnotic as lawyer Atticus Finch"

"Watching it from the vantage of 2022, though, it’s clear that the piece is more than just classily cast (in this case, Rafe Spall takes the lead), well-wrought and boasting talking-point elements. It blazingly captures the zeitgeist, so that what remains firmly in period is also urgent, the furore about Floyd reinforcing its percipience."

"Rafe Spall is stunning in new take on classic"

"Hats off to Aaron Sorkin. While the official title may be Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, this captivating drama is very much Sorkin’s take on a story that has become embedded in the consciousness of generations of readers. "

"If Peck is stolidly heroic in the film, Spall gives us a more restless, folksier figure: think of a cross between a young James Stewart and the buttoned-up Kevin Costner in JFK. "

"Rafe Spall plays the hero in a tremendous reimagining"

"Aaron Sorkin’s searing adaptation improves on Harper Lee’s novel where it matters the most"

"Most significantly, Sorkin expands the roles of African Americans Tom Robinson (Jude Owusu), the field hand falsely accused of rape, and Calpurnia (Pamela Nomvete), the Finches’ housekeeper.

Both actors are magnificent, challenging Spall’s warm, magnetic Atticus on his naive faith in his neighbours’ inherent goodness, and confronting the appalling reality with pain, rage and a control born of long, terrible endurance. Owusu’s tense, anguished testimony and Nomvete’s outraged agony, poured into a silent scream, are searingly memorable."

"Aaron Sorkin supercharges To Kill a Mockingbird"

"At last, here’s a play with serious oomph — pity about Rafe Spall’s designer stubble"

"... here is a production of To Kill a Mockingbird (Gielgud Theatre, London W1) to restore some high-brow oomph to Shaftesbury Avenue. Harper Lee’s novel about race and rape injustice in 1930s Alabama has been given a fresh varnish by Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter of, among others, The West Wing. It has a big cast and is skilfully staged."

"To Kill a Mockingbird — stirring drama celebrates and scrutinises Harper Lee’s novel"

"It’s in his exchanges with Calpurnia that this production finds its centre, as she challenges his assumptions. And it is in the neat overlaps between courtroom and theatre that it throws those challenges out to the audience"