Guthrie's 'Mockingbird' stays rooted in Harper Lee

Before you see the Guthrie's production of "To Kill a Mockingbird," ask yourself what it is you've always liked about the novel. Is it Scout, the wise-beyond-her-years narrator of the story? Or her father, Atticus Finch, the man of stone-hewn principle willing to risk everything in the name of justice?

How you answer that question may determine whether this "Mockingbird" works for you.

Atticus' approval rating took a nosedive with the publication of "Go Set a Watchman," but he comes through the translation to the stage just fine. Baylen Thomas' portrayal gives him the restrained strength and moral fiber that have led generations of fans to name their children and pets after him.

But for me, the character who has always loomed largest in the story is Scout. She's an old soul in a child's body, and her perplexity at the events and personalities that surround her speaks volumes.

In this play, though, she's pretty much just a kid.

A kid with precocious moments, sure — such as when she disarms a lynch mob by reminding one of its leaders that she goes to school with his son. But she is no longer the narrator of the story. The playwright Christopher Sergel has given that job to Miss Maudie Atkinson, a neighbor of the Finches, played here by Stacia Rice.

That's one of the compromises the play makes to bring this complex novel to the stage. Some characters and events are missing — there's no Aunt Alexandra, for example, and Miss Maudie's house never burns down. The story is ruthlessly compressed to make everything fit, and the trial of Tom Robinson becomes an ever-present crisis instead of the distant menace it is for much of the novel.

And yet, the play remains in many ways faithful to Harper Lee's text. Sections of dialogue have been lifted whole from the novel, and even some of Scout's inner observations are adapted as speeches to be delivered by adult characters.

Something else that remains intact is Harper Lee's liberal use of what we now call "the N word." Don't forget that while "To Kill a Mockingbird" was winning the Pulitzer Prize, it was also being banned by school boards around the country. Atticus upbraids Scout for using the word, not because it's vile and racist but merely because it's "common."

He might have said "ubiquitous." Even the doomed Tom Robinson uses it to describe himself, when he tells Atticus in court that if he were a black man, he'd be scared too.

Maybe it was my imagination, but at that moment I thought there was a hush in the audience, when the story's connection to our time became explicit. Headlines keep telling us that whether our justice system works for us may depend on the color of our skin. Back in 1960, Harper Lee and Atticus Finch were telling us the same thing.