Lawsuits upon lawsuits followed Rudin was canceled for bullying behavior and at one point Lee's estate sued Sorkin and Rudin for ruining the book. So when Broadway and Hollywood impresario Scott Rudin approached Lee for an update, she concurred. It was tremendously successful but hardly perfect. This focus steered the play away from the first-person portrayal to an outside observer's view. A reverie of sorts, it's narrated by Finch's neighbor Maudie instead of Finch's tomboy daughter Scout, as in the novel and film. The first stage version, penned by Christopher Sergel and premiered in 1991, had been the standard for decades among regional and school theaters. Academy Award and Emmy-winning writer Sorkin (films: A Few Good Men, The Social Network TV: The West Wing Broadway: Camelot revival that opened last month) took on the challenge to write a new version of Lee's iconic 1960 novel, itself a beloved 1962 Academy Award-winner with Gregory Peck's classic portrayal of small-town lawyer Atticus Finch defending an innocent black man accused of rape in the deepest racist south: Macon, Alabama, 1934. The playbill announces “Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird,” but, truth be told, it's really Aaron Sorkin's Mockingbird.
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