The Villagers tries ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’
By: Stuart Duncan
Novelist Harper Lee was 30 years old, had studied and decided to give up law and had worked as an airline reservation clerk plus other jobs when she found a literary agent. At Christmas in 1956 she received a note that read: "You have a year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."
Within that year she had the first draft of a projected novel, autobiographical really, about growing up in the mid-1930s in rural Alabama. She titled it To Kill A Mockingbird, but while she was waiting for it to be published she accompanied her childhood friend, Truman Capote, to Kansas as he did research for a book about the slaying of a family in the western part of that state. Capote’s book would turn out to be In Cold Blood and it would break new ground in journalistic fiction.
But Lee’s novel, published in mid-July of 1960, would become an immediate bestseller, win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, be made into a hugely successful Hollywood movie and in 2001 be named one of the most frequently challenged books by the American Library Association. Playwright Christopher Sergel has adapted the novel for the stage and The Villagers is presenting it on its Main Stage. Director Jonathan Wierzbicki, one of the finest community directors in the area, has cast it superbly, staged it with consummate care and audiences are packing into the theater in the Somerset Municipal Center to see it.
Adapter Sergel has used a familiar conceit there is a narrator, a young woman, Jean Louise Finch (Lee using a stage name), who introduces scenes and characters while watching herself as a 9-year-old play an integral role. And director Wierzbicki has taken it from there, masterfully blending staging and lighting, occasionally underscoring with mood music and always finding just the right note to allow audiences to feel the passion of the era.
A cast of 18 smoothly slides in and out of scenes, talented all. Among the ones you will note are: Pete DiMarco as Atticus Finch, who plays the role with such charm and intellect that you may forget Gregory Peck won all sorts of awards for the movie portrayal; Linda Missal as the aforementioned narrator, Jean Louise Finch, never detracting from the powerful story and always caressing the edges; Casey Chartier as "Scout," the precocious 9-year-old; Sam Ricciardi as Dill (actually Truman Capote as a 12-year-old friend who remained so to the end); Sandra Anthony as Calpurnia, the family housekeeper and "second mother"; Norm Halvorsen as the local judge; Hans Augustave as Tom Robinson, the African-American accused of a crime that meant death in those times, guilty or not; and Randall McCann as the uncouth bully Bob Ewell.
You are not going to be offered many better, more intelligent community productions this year. Grab this one.
To Kill A Mockingbird continues at Villagers Theatre, 415 DeMott Lane, through April 1. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sat. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $16, $14 seniors/students. For information, call (732) 873-2710 On the Web: www.villagerstheatre.com

