To Kill a Mockingbird – Festival Theatre

All rise. Atticus Finch is back in court, and on this particular evening in Edinburgh it isn’t Richard Coyle behind the spectacles but John J. O’Hagan, stepping up from first cover to take on one of American literature’s most beloved men of principle. He does so with quiet assurance. Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, reborn for the stage by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Bartlett Sher, has been touring the UK with glowing tributes. The Edinburgh stop at the Festival Theatre proves both admirable and exhausting, a beautifully acted, morally charged evening that never-the-less feels every minute of its bloated three-and-a-quarter-hour runtime.

Sorkin’s adaptation has long been praised for shifting the novel’s moral centre from saintly nostalgia to uneasy realism. His Atticus isn’t carved in granite, he’s a decent man trying to hold fast to decency in a world that keeps proving him wrong. “You don’t have to like what someone says,” he tells the children, “but you can still try to understand them.” It’s a fine sentiment, and, as Sorkin makes clear, a naïve one when set against the racism and violence of 1930s Alabama. The trial of Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape, unfolds with grim inevitability. What Sorkin adds is a sharper focus on Atticus’s complicity in believing that reason alone can cure hate. The shadow of modern-day America, Charlottesville, George Floyd, the ongoing culture wars, hangs over every “All men are created equal.”

The Festival Theatre’s cavernous stage suits Miriam Buether’s set perfectly, a weathered wooden frame of porches and courtrooms that slide and rotate like moral tectonic plates. Ann Roth’s costumes and Jennifer Tipton’s lighting bathe the dustbowl palette in soft Southern decay. The look and sound, with Adam Guettel’s melancholic score, are superb, immersive without shouting for attention.

The performances impress across the board. O’Hagan gives an earnest, unshowy Atticus, gradually shedding his belief in human goodness as the verdict approaches. Anna Munden, Gabriel Scott, and Dylan Malyn as Scout, Jem, and Dill are excellent, natural, funny, and heartbreakingly sincere. Andrea Davy’s Calpurnia offers a quietly furious counterpoint, voicing the anger Sorkin felt Lee’s original never gave her. The ensemble works like a well-rehearsed jury, though not even their polish can disguise a noticeable technical hitch in the first half, a fifteen-minute halt that breaks the spell and stretches an already long evening further.

The first half drags, too much talking, not quite enough pacing, too much light and not enough heat, but the second half finds its rhythm in the courtroom, where Sorkin’s machine-gun dialogue finally snaps into focus. By the time Atticus delivers his plea for justice, “But this is a court of law. In our courts, all men are created equal”, the play has found its tragic heartbeat.

In the end, this Mockingbird stands as both a time capsule and a mirror. The Festival Theatre audience rises not just for the story’s nobility but for its uncomfortable relevance. It may be long, wordy, and occasionally stuck in its own moral mud, but it’s still a story worth standing up for, even if, after three hours, some of us are standing mainly to stretch our legs.

Till Saturday October 25th, then continuing tour.

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 21^st October 2025

North West End UK Rating:

Running time – 3hrs 15mins (including interval)