ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-22-18)
We went to see a fine production of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the Shubert Theater last week. The show was adapted fairly faithfully by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Bartlett Sher and featured a capable cast led by Jeff Daniels. I had read the book when I was a wee lad but didn't remember too much about it, other than that there are a whole lot more Finches and surprisingly fewer mockingbirds than you'd expect, and I thought the whole thing was for the birds. But now it's a different story. Seems like there might be a few lessons in there that people didn't quite learn the first time around. It's amazing how many lessons you're willing to learn when you get older, when you probably thought you'd be teaching them instead.
Our seats were in whatever is above the balcony but below the ionosphere, in the actual last row of the theater. We walked up about 10 flights of stairs, and the air was getting thinner, and I was thinking that this is probably what killed the mockingbird. When we made it up there, the guy onstage was just finishing up his announcement about the perils of cellphone use during a Broadway show. The seats were stacked at about a 60-degree angle, so steep that if a cellphone did ring, it could set off a landslide and I would be pitched off the balcony into the orchestra section. And the guy onstage would say, "You SEE, people? THAT'S what can happen if you don't turn your cellphone off."
The action centers around the trial of an innocent black man in the south accused of a serious crime. The play is at times narrated by the young Finch brother and sister, who shed an alternate perspective on the proceedings inside and outside the courtroom. If anything important ever happened in my young life, I'm glad my brother and sister did not get a chance to narrate it. There is no way they would have made the story flattering to me.
Two hours and fifty minutes is a long time, so a good portion of my theater experience was taken up by calculating exactly when I should go to the bathroom. That's the way it works at my age. I know I have an intermission, should I try to get two visits in? I do some quick calculations based on how much I've had to drink and how many people I could manage to inconvenience by getting up during the show. I went through that same routine at the comedy club once. The show had a two drink minimum, And after three or four comedians we were on our way towards the maximum, and I had to go. I had put it off for quite a while now, and I didn't want to give the headliner a chance to reverse-heckle me. But duty called, so I tried to slink out the back exit, and I was almost at the curtain, so close I could touch it, and the guy points to me and yells, "HEY! YOU IN THE BACK! THE '80S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR HAIR BACK!" And everyone had a good laugh at my expense, and it was pretty expensive.
The themes of "Mockingbird" are weighty. Sometimes justice is blind, sometimes those who administer it are blind. It's a study of how far we've come in such a short time, and in how little has changed over these long years. In between the study of racism in the South and the question of what constitutes moral integrity, I realize that I should not have had that milkshake after dinner. I am adamantly lactose intolerant, even though my New Year's resolution this year was to be more tolerant of it. My stomach starts gurgling loudly during the dramatic passages, and I am hoping against all hope that people will think that it's the air conditioning system making that noise, even though it's the middle of November, and I can't think of any air conditioners that sound like my stomach.
Jeff Daniels was fantastic as Atticus Finch. Could anyone really memorize all those lines? There has to be a secret transmitter in his ear or something, and a guy in a helicopter flying above the theater who tells him what to say. I saw it on "Mission: Impossible" once. As for myself, I can't even remember why I got up and came into this room. What was I looking for again? I remember it was something dumb, which doesn't narrow it down very much in my case. Even so, I think I would be great in a play, as long as I had only one or two lines, and those lines should be something I would normally say, like: "Why can't car manufacturers make a button on the dashboard that activates the defroster and the car vent at the same time, so when it rains in the summer I can see out my windshield AND not boil to death?" I bet you could work that line into "Phantom of the Opera," and the Phantom would say, "EXACTLY!" Maybe I could even be in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch would be a nice part for me, but I think I could bypass that, and step right into the title role.
We went to see a fine production of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the Shubert Theater last week. The show was adapted fairly faithfully by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Bartlett Sher and featured a capable cast led by Jeff Daniels. I had read the book when I was a wee lad but didn't remember too much about it, other than that there are a whole lot more Finches and surprisingly fewer mockingbirds than you'd expect, and I thought the whole thing was for the birds. But now it's a different story. Seems like there might be a few lessons in there that people didn't quite learn the first time around. It's amazing how many lessons you're willing to learn when you get older, when you probably thought you'd be teaching them instead.
Our seats were in whatever is above the balcony but below the ionosphere, in the actual last row of the theater. We walked up about 10 flights of stairs, and the air was getting thinner, and I was thinking that this is probably what killed the mockingbird. When we made it up there, the guy onstage was just finishing up his announcement about the perils of cellphone use during a Broadway show. The seats were stacked at about a 60-degree angle, so steep that if a cellphone did ring, it could set off a landslide and I would be pitched off the balcony into the orchestra section. And the guy onstage would say, "You SEE, people? THAT'S what can happen if you don't turn your cellphone off."
The action centers around the trial of an innocent black man in the south accused of a serious crime. The play is at times narrated by the young Finch brother and sister, who shed an alternate perspective on the proceedings inside and outside the courtroom. If anything important ever happened in my young life, I'm glad my brother and sister did not get a chance to narrate it. There is no way they would have made the story flattering to me.
Two hours and fifty minutes is a long time, so a good portion of my theater experience was taken up by calculating exactly when I should go to the bathroom. That's the way it works at my age. I know I have an intermission, should I try to get two visits in? I do some quick calculations based on how much I've had to drink and how many people I could manage to inconvenience by getting up during the show. I went through that same routine at the comedy club once. The show had a two drink minimum, And after three or four comedians we were on our way towards the maximum, and I had to go. I had put it off for quite a while now, and I didn't want to give the headliner a chance to reverse-heckle me. But duty called, so I tried to slink out the back exit, and I was almost at the curtain, so close I could touch it, and the guy points to me and yells, "HEY! YOU IN THE BACK! THE '80S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR HAIR BACK!" And everyone had a good laugh at my expense, and it was pretty expensive.
The themes of "Mockingbird" are weighty. Sometimes justice is blind, sometimes those who administer it are blind. It's a study of how far we've come in such a short time, and in how little has changed over these long years. In between the study of racism in the South and the question of what constitutes moral integrity, I realize that I should not have had that milkshake after dinner. I am adamantly lactose intolerant, even though my New Year's resolution this year was to be more tolerant of it. My stomach starts gurgling loudly during the dramatic passages, and I am hoping against all hope that people will think that it's the air conditioning system making that noise, even though it's the middle of November, and I can't think of any air conditioners that sound like my stomach.
Jeff Daniels was fantastic as Atticus Finch. Could anyone really memorize all those lines? There has to be a secret transmitter in his ear or something, and a guy in a helicopter flying above the theater who tells him what to say. I saw it on "Mission: Impossible" once. As for myself, I can't even remember why I got up and came into this room. What was I looking for again? I remember it was something dumb, which doesn't narrow it down very much in my case. Even so, I think I would be great in a play, as long as I had only one or two lines, and those lines should be something I would normally say, like: "Why can't car manufacturers make a button on the dashboard that activates the defroster and the car vent at the same time, so when it rains in the summer I can see out my windshield AND not boil to death?" I bet you could work that line into "Phantom of the Opera," and the Phantom would say, "EXACTLY!" Maybe I could even be in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch would be a nice part for me, but I think I could bypass that, and step right into the title role.
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