![]() Sorkin puts that poisonous racism, both individual and systemic, on display in “Mockingbird,” and it’s raw, ugly, and unsparing. That is where Atticus will mount a stirring defense of Tom, and where American racism itself will be on trial. Within the first few minutes of the play, Sorkin takes us to the courtroom in small-town Alabama where, in 1934, a Black man named Tom Robinson (a quietly moving Yaegel T. So he’s a dab hand at crafting entertaining scorpions-in-a-bottle showdowns, and that makes “Mockingbird” a tightly focused, fast-moving, and gripping affair. In Sorkin’s “The West Wing,” too, the clash of ideas and personalities was a central dynamic. Inevitably, there are times in this “Mockingbird” when people say clever things because Sorkin wants them said, whether they fit the character or not.īut he’s got many strengths of his own, among them this pertinent one: The man knows from courtroom drama.ĭon’t forget that his breakthrough success was the 1989 Broadway production of “A Few Good Men” - later, of course, a movie with Tom Cruise and a fire-breathing Jack (”You can’t handle the truth!”) Nicholson. ![]() He’s known for scripts with a words-per-minute velocity that sets land speed records, and when it comes to tolerating Sorkin’s style, your mileage may vary. ![]()
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