Emmy Award-winning actor Richard Thomas is Atticus Finch in the history-making production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Marcus Performing Arts Center.
The production is historic because the play and the multi-year national tour across North America has set the record as the highest-grossing American play in Broadway history. The current tour has played more than 500 performances in 44 cities and has been seen by more than a million theater goers.
Performances of the current show began Nov. 1, 2018, at the Shubert Theatre and played to sold-out houses until the Broadway shutdown in March 2020. Now, it’s in Milwaukee through Nov. 12 as part of the national tour.
Thomas plays the southern lawyer and gentleman. The film version of the story starred Gregory Peck. “For any actor, like Peck, to have created a part which lives on, one that people identify with and has a life of its own, is one of the greatest privileges any actor could experience,” Thomas said. “It’s incredible to play a character that remains with you so well.”
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Thomas’s portrayal of Atticus has been embraced by critics and audiences alike. Atticus is the father many of us aspired to be, but most of us have fallen dramatically short. Atticus is a tall order to live up to. Of all the characters in American history, Atticus Finch transcends nearly all of them.
“Atticus is one of those fictional characters that is so vivid,” Thomas explained. “The character has a life off the page. In the novel, Atticus was a man who talked to clients, judges and lawyers like no other. It’s as though he is a personal mentor to everyone, especially his children.”
Thomas said Peck’s performance has had a powerful effect on actors and audiences. “He’s seen as some sort of perfection,” Thomas said. “The perfect idealized version of a good father and lawyer. To that end we can only aspire.”
Stage and film writer Aaron Sorkin wrote this version of the story. On stage, Thomas said the embodiment of that perfect character isn’t so interesting dramatically. He said Sorkin altered some of the characters to make them more interesting.
“Aaron Sorkin has done such a great thing with the play. He’s taken Atticus off his pedestal, which is a gift for actors and the audience.” Thomas said. “He wanted to make Atticus the protagonist, as Scout Finch was in the book and film.”
Thomas said Atticus doesn’t develop as a character that much in the book and film. The play is different. “Atticus has a lot to learn in this production,” Thomas said. “He suffers a loss of innocence like the kids do. But we still experience his sense of community and belief in the goodness of people. Sorkin humanized the character. We don’t need another white savior.”
The character of Calpurnia, who runs the Finch household, has been brought to the front of the story; her role takes on more of the story. In the book and film she was a background character. In the play, Calpurnia has been expanded and the play shows a strong relationship with Atticus, as much as the kids, and how they’re raising the kids together.
Thomas said Jacqueline Williams expertly plays Calpurnia and deepened that part. “Tom Robbins is given great depth as well.”
Thomas said they didn’t shrinkwrap the novel and they’re different in a lot of ways. “Sorkin created something that is purely theatrical. Young roles are played by adults. You can only do that in theater. Time goes back and forth and you’re immediately pulled out of your nostalgia zone. The language Sorkin uses is beautiful. He captured the southern idioms and cadence.”
Thomas said within 10 minutes, the audience is in their world. Getting to know his version of Atticus.
Jeff Daniels was Atticus on Broadway and he and Thomas go way back, both attending McBurney School in Manhattan. Robert DeNiro, J.D. Salinger and Henry Winkler went there as well.
Thomas was born in Manhattan and lives there today. “I was a city kid,” Thomas explained. “My parents were both dancers with the New York City Ballet, and they operated a ballet school. I did a little dancing, but not much.”
He went to Columbia College in New York and majored in Chinese before switching to the English Department.
“This was the late ’60s and we all had a language requirement at Columbia. I’ve forgotten all of it. It was the beginning of the language arts lab thing. The two strongest language schools at the time were Stanford and Columbia.”
Thomas has been blessed to play another beloved character. He was John-Boy Walton on the long-running CBS series, The Waltons, an American historical drama television series set in Virginia during the Great Depression, and the story continued into World War II.
“John-Boy was just a young man who was trying to figure out where he was in life, what he wanted to do,” Thomas said. “He’s very different from Atticus, who was older, comfortable with the community. Atticus knew who he was, loved his family and the world they lived in.”
In contrast, John-Boy lived in a rural area with his family with one foot in that world, another outside, searching for the universal experience, a new time and place.
“It was an incredible honor to play that role and I’ve never taken it for granted,” Thomas said. “Sometimes I wonder how the hell I got so lucky. The cast is still very close.”
Thomas said he’d never been to Milwaukee before this show. “I got in on a Monday. Tuesday I was able to run some errands and get all that stuff done. Wednesday we’re doing press.”
He said he will head out to Ten Chimneys in Waukesha before he leaves. This was the summer home and gentleman’s farm of Broadway actors Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. It’s a social center for American theater. Thomas said he’s heard summers are great here and mentioned he’d heard of Summerfest.
The show is on to Birmingham, Alabama next. You can still see Thomas as Atticus Finch in the show in Milwaukee through Sunday, Nov. 12.
