To Kill A Mockingbird Comes To The West End

A reimagining of To Kill a Mockingbird comes to the West End from March. The production will open at the Gielgud Theatre on 31 March 2022, with previews from 10 March. This new play by Aaron Sorkin is based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and directed by Bartlett Sher.

The show had been a consistent hit in the USA in recent years. Before the Broadway shutdown in March 2020, To Kill a Mockingbird continuously played to standing-room-only houses. Since performances began on Thursday 1 November 2018, the production has not played to an empty seat, with capacity remaining over 100% for every performance. On February 26, 2020, the cast of To Kill a Mockingbird gave a history-making performance of the play at Madison Square Garden, for 18,000 New York City school children. This was the largest single performance of a theatrical work in the history of world theater. In 2019, to culminate National “Theatre in Our Schools” month, Aaron Sorkin, Bartlett Sher, and members of the Broadway cast took the play to Washington, D.C. for an unprecedented special presentation at the Library of Congress, in partnership with the Educational Theatre Association.

The cast and creative on the West End

The West End team have been announced ahead of the upcoming debut, with a fantastic list of names involved with bringing the show to UK audiences.

Rafe Spall plays Atticus Finch. For theatre, Spall’s work includes Death of England, Hedda Gabler – Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Play (National Theatre), Betrayal (Broadway – directed by Mike Nichols), Constellations (Royal Court Theatre and West End – Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor), and John Gabriel Borkman (Donmar Warehouse). His television credits include Trying, The Salisbury Poisonings, The War of the Worlds, and his international Emmy-nominated performance as Joe in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.

For film, his work includes Academy Award-winning The Big Short, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, Dan Mazer’s I Give it a Year, Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Lone Scherfig’s One Day, and most recently Just Mercy, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Men in Black: International, and the forthcoming The English for BBC and Amazon.

Jude Owusu plays Tom Robinson. His theatre work includes The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Bartholomew Fair (Shakespeare’s Globe), Tamburlaine, I Cinna, Julius Caesar (RSC), The Cherry Orchard (Bristol Old Vic), A Tale of Two Cities (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Jeramee, Hartleby and Ooglemoore (Unicorn Theatre), The Comedy of Errors (National Theatre), Othello (Malachite Theatre), Africker(Hoxton Hall), Wayne (Etcetera Theatre), and The Robbers (New Diorama Theatre).

For television, his work includes The Dumping Ground, Father Brown and The Hollow Crown: Wars of the Roses – Richard III.

The cast includes Harry Attwell (Mr Cunningham/Boo Radley), Amanda Boxer (Mrs Henry Dubose), Poppy Lee Friar (Mayella Ewell), John Hastings (Bailiff), Simon Hepworth (Mr Roscoe/Dr Reynolds), Laura Howard (Miss Stephanie/Dill’s Mother), Lloyd Hutchinson (Link Deas), Gwyneth Keyworth (Scout Finch), Tom Mannion (Sheriff Heck Tate), David Moorst (Dill Harris), Pamela Nomvete (Calpurnia), Jim Norton (Judge Taylor), Patrick O’Kane (Bob Ewell), Harry Redding (Jem Finch), David Sturzaker (Horace Gilmer) and Natasha Williams (Mrs Dubose’s Maid), with Helen Belbin, Laurence Belcher, Paul Birchard, Ryan Ellsworth, Rebecca Hayes, Danny Hetherington, Matthew Jure, Anna Munden and Itoya Osagiede making up the ensemble.

Joining Sher and the original Broadway creative team are Miriam Buether (Set), Ann Roth (Costume), Jennifer Tipton (Lighting), Scott Lehrer (Sound), Adam Guettel (Original Score), Kimberly Grigsby (Music Supervision) and Campbell Young Associates (Hair & Wigs) – are Serena Hill as Casting Director, Hazel Holder as Voice & Dialect Coach, Titas Halder as Associate Director, Rasheka Christie-Carter as Assistant Director, Tavia Rivée Jefferson as Cultural Coordinator, and Candida Caldicot as Musical Director.

About To Kill a Mockingbird

Set in Maycomb, Alabama in 1934, To Kill a Mockingbird has provided American literature with some of its most indelible characters: lawyer Atticus Finch, the tragically wrongly-accused Tom Robinson, Atticus’ daughter Scout, her brother Jem, their housekeeper and caretaker Calpurnia and the reclusive Arthur “Boo” Radley. For the past six decades and for every generation, this story, its characters and portrait of small-town America have helped to, and continue to, inspire conversation and change.

Published in 1960, Harper Lee’s debut novel To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate and astonishing success – it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was published in ten languages within a year of its release. The book, considered one of the great classics of modern American literature, went on to become a global phenomenon, with more than 50 million copies in print to date. To Kill a Mockingbird has moved international readers for half a century, with editions published in over 40 languages including Persian, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Vietnamese, Armenian, Chinese, and Esperanto.

In 2012 the Library of Congress presented an exhibition titled Books That Shaped America, inviting those who attended to cite the book that most changed their lives – To Kill a Mockingbird came second only to the Bible.

In 2007, Lee was recognized with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which cited her “outstanding contribution to America’s literary tradition”. In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Lee the National Medal of Arts, an award given for “outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts” – the nation’s highest honour for artistic achievement.

To Kill a Mockingbird UK Website

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