Review: To Kill a Mockingbird @ Intiman

The set design by Alec Hammond hits you when you first step in the theater -- a bare clay backyard, fronted by three ramshackle houses (the Radley residence notably askew on its foundation), a tilted phone pole, and gnarled old tree trunk that rises into a bloody-limbed, gothic horror, with red chairs lynched from its branches. We weren't sure if that represented the children's loss of innocence, or the jury's complicity -- in any event, we discovered we were the jury when the courtroom scene arrived.

Maude provides narration, to keep you on track, with the sometime assistance of town busybody Stephanie Crawford (Lori Larsen). Calpurnia (Josephine Howell) keeps the kids on track -- mostly. They're a rambunctious bunch, Jem, Scout (aka Jean Louise), and Dill (aka Charles Baker Harris), who is played by round-faced, tow-headed Lino Marioni as the miniature Truman Capote he was meant to be: by turns tiny fanciful tale-teller and insightful seer.

Bob Ewell (Russell Hodgkinson), father of a hapless, cringing Mayella Ewell (Liz Morton) had less snaky threat to him than we wanted. A bully and a batterer, he's fearsome because he's weak, angry, and ignorant. He's the kind of man kids instinctively avoid, sensing he's forever in search of weaker prey, while Hodgkinson had his best moments with a foaming-mouthed rage that recalled the rabid dog that stalks the children earlier.

At the end, the audience rose almost as one in a standing ovation. We would have stood for Keaton Whittaker; her frustration and anguish can get shouty and lead to stock hand-on-forehead poses, but more often she's alert, watchful, questioning, and it's apparent her whole being revolves around Atticus. The play's project is whether -- like Harper Lee, we imagine -- you come to love (not just respect) this man who stands so sufficient to himself that little children slip off, however hard they hug.