Richard Thomas to play Atticus Finch in TKAM Tour — Page 2

Anyone seeing the tour while it’s in Boston? Hoping we get more reviews as it officially opens.

Recently saw the tour. The music is now canned. Any set automation has been removed. No actors walk through the audience. The only moment that didn't work in this regard was the scene in front of the jailhouse. They raised a small scrim with a jailhouse painted on it and when Tom had his few lines at the end of the scene he stood beside it.

I did not like Richard Thomas in The Humans. He was very wooden. I went in to this expecting the worst and it turns out he's very decent. The entire cast is playing up the comedy of the show. The audience I was in reacted as if they were seeing a Neil Simon play, which made me uncomfortable if I'm honest.

This is really Thomas' fault. While he doesn't do anything wrong and is good, he's not intellectually compelling enough to turn the play into anything more than an offbeat comedy. The whole Jem/Atticus "whose side would you have fought on?" "I would have hid under the bed like a coward" confrontation was the most searing moment when I saw Jeff Daniels on Broadway. Here it was somehow the biggest laugh line of the night. 

On Broadway the moment was a condemnation of white liberal complacency. (Whether Sorkin can effectively do that with this property is a different question.) On tour that moment and the entire show felt as if it was reassuring midwesterners that they were a mile away and generations more evolved than the people on stage. Entertaining but uncomfortable.

Has anyone heard of a replacement for Richard Thomas? He was excellent earlier this year in Philadelphia, but I noticed the tour is starting to make return engagements and is running till June 2024. I’d assume he wouldn’t sign a contract for that long and I’d be interested in seeing it again with another Atticus.

According to their stage manager job postings that went up a few weeks back (and are still active on the NETworks site) it's still going to be Equity, under Tier B Special Concession.