Atticus Finch (Richard Thomas, left) defends Tom Robinson (Yaegel T. Welch) in a scene from Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

 Julieta Cervantes

You could almost make out the gasps from the audience nearly filling Centennial Hall when the first N-word dropped from the stage.

It’s part of the vernacular in Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which Broadway In Tucson opened on Tuesday, but that didn’t make it any less shocking to the system filtered through our socially conscious 2023 ears.

Of course, the N-word was essential to the telling of Harper Lee’s 1962 novel of a Black man wrongly accused of a crime that could net him a death sentence in the Great Depression era Deep South. Those were the days when Black people were not only relegated to the back of the bus and their own drinking fountains but American justice was rarely on their side.

In too many cases to count, a Black man accused of a serious crime often met his fate at the end of a rope.

Even with that historical context, you sensed the discomfort from the Tucson audience Tuesday night whenever the racist father Bob Ewell (Joey Collins) uttered the term with hate enunciating every syllable. It felt like a dagger in our collective conscious.

Sorkin adapted Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in 2018, years before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the half-dozen other high-profile killings of African-Americans in police custody that filled the headlines and led to protests worldwide.

And yet, Sorkin channeled 2020 in a way that seems almost prescient. The same issues that played out in the courtroom of the fictional town of Macomb are playing out today, issues of equality in the legal system, fairness and the Constitutional guarantee that “all men are created equal.”

There are glimmers of hope in “Mockingbird”; the judge (David Mantis) believes the South is due for its epiphany and appoints Atticus Finch (Richard Thomas) — a lawyer with unassailable virtues and a deeply unshakeable conviction that at the core, all people are good — to defend Tom Robinson (Yaegel T. Welch). Finch, whose children Scout (Melanie Moore) and Jem (Jacob Mark) wish that he would share their sense of outrage at the racist behavior all around them, uses humor to quiet the haters.

But humor can only go so far when a group of men in white hoods surround the jail where Robinson is being held and tell Finch they are going to mete out their own justice on the tail end of a pickup truck. Scout, in a remarkable performance by Moore, delivers one of the play’s biggest anti-racism messages when she recognizes the voice of one of the hooded men and calls him out by name.

In Lee’s novel, Scout is the narrator and central character; in the play, Sorkin assigns that role to Atticus, allowing us to see his evolution from dignified defender of “there’s good in all” to the stark realization that his neighbors are evil to the core.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” runs through Sunday, Jan. 22, with Broadway in Tucson.

Thomas delivers a powerful performance in the courtroom, where he challenges the veracity of the accuser’s story, and on the front porch, where he doles out fatherly advice to his children who call him by his first name. Thomas’s witty asides providing snippets of humor to break up the play’s darkness gave way to shatteringly emotional statements on the injustices of racism.

Welch gives Tom Robinson humanity and strength as he defies Atticus’s advice and shouts out that he was helping his accuser because he felt sorry for her. Arianna Gayle Stucki made us feel alternately sorry for Mayella Ewell as the victim who turned victimizer on the stand.

Steven Lee Johnson delivered one of the most poignant performances as Dill Harris, the mysterious and affable neighbor boy who has more wisdom and humanity than most of the adults in town.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” continues through Sunday, Jan. 22, at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd., on the University of Arizona campus. For showtimes and tickets, visit broadwayintucson.com.

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Broadway In Tucson is bringing Aaron Sorkin's 'To Kill A Mockingbird" to Centennial Hall next week. The show, starring Richard Thomas, opens Tuesday, Jan. 17.
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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Twitter @Starburch