On Stage in Monroeville

Like any number of small towns across the country (probably the world), Monroeville, Alabama, has had to explore ways to keep the lights on in a world where everyone (and every industry) moves to the city. Fortunately for the good people of Monroeville, two of the twentieth century’s literary titans lived there as children: the odd-couple friends Truman Capote and Harper Lee. Capote moved to the city. Lee did too, but the forty years she spent living part-time in New York are elided in the public memory: “Born Monroeville 1926, died Monroeville 2016.” Monroeville would have followed many of its peers into total dusty obscurity if it hadn’t been vividly, with the thinnest veneer of plausible fictionalization, portrayed in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Since 1991, a local group, the Mockingbird Players, have produced and performed a stage version of Lee’s opus. They have occasionally given performances in Europe, Israel, and China, but the play’s home is the Monroe County Courthouse.

The open set allows the performance to make use of the space: characters wander off down the road and continue until they’re out of sight around the corner, and a pickup full of violence-seeking yokels can pull directly onto the “stage” for a confrontation with Atticus Finch. —Chris Turner-Neal

The first act, weather permitting, takes place on the grounds outside the old building, built in 1903 and “the courthouse” as Lee knew it, but a museum since the 1960s. The relatively simple set comprising of a stretch of street and the front stoops of the Radleys, Finches, and neighbor Miss Maudie. Miss Maudie emerges as a narrator in the stage version: close to the action without participating and familiar with the town’s history and mores, the character slips back and forth across the fourth wall as needed. The open set allows the performance to make use of the space: characters wander off down the road and continue until they’re out of sight around the corner, and a pickup full of violence-seeking yokels can pull directly onto the “stage” for a confrontation with Atticus Finch. A small choir of Black churchgoers adds to the atmosphere: in a play about the fate of a Black man in an anti-Black system, there are relatively few Black characters, which makes sense given the legal system at the time, but also leaves us with little Black comment on the proceedings. The choir partly redresses this imbalance, expressing themselves in the church music that was one of the few safe avenues for public Black voices under Jim Crow.

Right before intermission, the jury is selected from among the adult white men in attendance, given who was eligible for jury service in the Alabama of Lee’s childhood. (Our group contained three of that favored demographic, but no dice.) These men would enter and exit the jury box as the judge called them; the rest of us entered the historic courthouse, nearly filling it. (A small irony: the balcony, once the “colored section,” is now the most desirable seating because of the view it offers.) As the trial unfurls, characters in attendance sit in the audience among the spectators all the way through the final denouement.

The performances were excellent, reinforcing my belief that productions by committed amateurs are better than half-hearted professional work. All the parts were shared, with multiple actors taking the role on different nights, except Calpurnia, the Finches’ housekeeper, played every show by an apparently tireless Dott Bradley. Everyone we saw deserved flowers, and special praise is due Cynthia Martens-Lamont as Miss Maudie, gentle without being saccharine; Lily Hudson, a magnificent Scout; and Joseph Lamont, an unfathomably nasty Bob Ewell. The closest I have to a criticism is the iffy sound system, which is less a complaint about this performance and more a condemnation of the failure of American industry to produce affordable and reliable sound systems. We can send a man to the moon, but if he comes back to speak at a high school, the microphone will crackle. (In other news, tell your friends you read the article in which I began my transformation into Andy Rooney.)

"The performances were excellent, reinforcing my belief that productions by committed amateurs are better than half-hearted professional work." —Chris Turner-Neal

Tickets open several months in advance of the show’s annual springtime run. Our performance did not appear sold out—but close, so some advance planning is recommended. A handful of AirBnB units are available downtown; our larger group was perfectly comfortable at the Best Western. We enjoyed disgracing ourselves on the mighty portions available at David’s Catfish House, a barnlike fried seafood wonderland around the corner from the hotel.

This year’s To Kill a Mockingbird performance will take place in Fridays at 6:30 pm and Saturdays at 2 pm and 6:30 pm in April. General admission is $72; Reserved seating and early admission is $92. Tickets to the final performance on Saturday April 27, featuring a special birthday celebration in honor of the late Harper Lee’s 98th birthday, are $135 and include live music, food, drink, and meet and greets after the performance.

Additional performances directed towards younger audiences will also take place April 1, 2, 3, and 10 at 9 am. To purchase tickets for these shows, call (251) 575-7767. Learn more at tokillamockingbird.com.