More: Blockbuster hits highlight PNC Broadway in Columbus' new season What does Thomas think of Sorkin?īest known as Emmy-winning writer-creator of TV’s “The West Wing” (1999-2006), Sorkin is an Oscar-winning screenwriter ( “The Social Network”) and Broadway playwright (“A Few Good Men” the current “Camelot” revival).Sorkin also wrote screenplays for “The American President,” “ Being the Ricardos,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “ Moneyball,” “ Steve Jobs” and “ The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Sorkin’s play, Jones wrote, “has the capacity to change how America sees this story for good.” The 2019 New York production, nominated for nine Tony awards, broke records as the highest-grossing American play in Broadway history.Ĭritic Chris Jones, in his Chicago Tribune review, praised Sorkin’s “genuinely radical and thoroughly gripping” adaptation, which adds “agency” to key Black characters. Yet, as a “playwright at heart,” Sorkin said he couldn’t reject the “extremely enticing” opportunity to adapt Lee’s novel onstage. Sorkin speaks: Aaron Sorkin on timeliness of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' How did the Broadway show fare?Ĭontemplating the “suicide mission” of reinterpreting “this country’s most enduring story about racial injustice,” Sorkin told the San Francisco Chronicle he feared he would “ruin everyone’s childhood.” That makes him more approachable,” Thomas said.
He tries to do the right thing, but doesn’t get it quite right. “He’s forced to interrogate his idealism, his sense of community and all his assumptions. While Lee portrayed Atticus as an “idealized father figure,” Sorkin takes the kind character “down off the pedestal” while giving him a dry, “country sense of humor,” Thomas said. More: Richard Thomas talks 'Waltons,' career ahead of 'Mockingbird' coming to Ohio Theatre What makes this play new and different?Īaron Sorkin’s drama is based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning 1960 novel (not the 1962 film) about a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a Black man accused of rape during the Jim Crow era of enforced segregation.“This is not the novel or movie, but an adaptation by a wonderful writer who has earned the right to tell any story he writes in his own way,” Thomas said. That’s not possible,” said Thomas, a prolific actor still best remembered as John-Boy on “The Waltons.” “I’m not following in anyone’s footsteps. Thomas stars in the national tour, which opens Tuesday at the Ohio Theatre. Richard Thomas isn’t daunted about playing Atticus Finch, even after Gregory Peck’s Oscar-winning and Jeff Daniels’ Tony-nominated performances of the iconic role in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
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