To Kill a Mockingbird to Play The Shubert Theatre

https://www.broadway.com/buzz/192145/broadways-to-kill-a-mockingbird-harper-lee-estate-settle-litigation-production-to-play-the-shubert-theatre/


Wow I did not expect this at all! Maybe this is why Dolly closed?

Updated On: 5/13/18 at 01:54 AM

Never been a Jeff Daniels fan.

It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the storyline and how Rudin will change aspects of the movie/book for theater and the 21st century...

“I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics,” Mr. Rudin said. “The world has changed since then.”

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/theater/to-kill-a-mockingbird-broadway-harper-lee.html#click=https://t.co/aQC12hPoCm

Apparently no one here is aware of the recent legal situation with this production and Harper Lee’s estate and how this production was almost cancelled. Any deviation from the original novel, tone, intention and anything else otherwise is legally not permitted by Lee’s estate.

BrodyFosse123 said: "Apparently no one here is aware of the recent legal situation with this production and Harper Lee’s estate and how this production was almost cancelled. Any deviation from the original novel, tone, intention and anything else otherwise is legally not permitted by Lee’s estate."


Perhaps...maybe not so much now:

“The requests to dismiss both cases filed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday included no details of the settlement, and it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Rudin had agreed to change the script, or whether the Lee estate was no longer seeking such changes.”

“The two sides issued a four-sentence statement saying that they had “amicably settled” the litigation, but offering no specifics. Mr. Rudin declined to comment, and a lawyer representing the estate referred to the joint statement and declined to comment further.

Updated On: 5/13/18 at 08:59 AM

KathyNYC2 said: "After all those comments, I have little to no interest in seeing this. To choose to present a book that has a child in a major lead role and not cast children because they can't hold your interest on stage is ridiculous enough.

But also choosing the huge Shubert theater seems bizarre at best. This is a play not a musical unless I've missed something. Wouldn't a smaller more intimate house work better with the material? Big splashy musicals can get swallowed up when sitting in parts of this house.

And the irony - one of the last shows here was Matilda. I guess children can't hold the audience at the Shubert for 2+ hours on this stage, right ???"

Plenty of plays have been housed at the Shubert: Seascape, Blithe Spirit, The Sunshine Boys, Wait Until Dark, etc.