‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ will not return to Broadway

The show played its final performance at the Shubert Theatre on January 16.

Aaron Sorkin's stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird will not resume Broadway performances. The play, based on Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ran for just over three years on Broadway.

In January, it was announced that To Kill a Mockingbird would play its final performance at the Shubert Theatre on January 16 and go on hiatus through June 1, when the show would reopen at the Belasco Theatre. In March, the musical Girl From the North Country, which went on its own winter hiatus from the Belasco, announced that it would return to the venue through June 19. To Kill a Mockingbird did not announce a new reopening date.

As reported by The New York Times, there were plans for Mockingbird to reopen in November at the Music Box Theatre.

However, Mockingbird producer Scott Rudin wrote in another email obtained by the Times, "The reason I opted not to bring back TKAM has to do with my lack of confidence in the climate for plays next winter. I do not believe that a remount of Mockingbird would have been competitive in the marketplace."

To Kill a Mockingbird centers on Atticus Finch, a lawyer representing an innocent Black man in court in pre-Civil Rights Alabama. The story is told through the perspective of his six-year-old daughter Scout, who witnesses the trial and the hatred it brings her family and the defendant. She tries to reconcile it with her childhood memories of her neighbors, who she'd believed were good at heart.

Performances began on November 1, 2018 ahead of a December 13 opening. Jeff Daniels and Celia Keenan-Bolger led the cast as Atticus and Scout Finch, respectively.

The show enjoyed success during its time on Broadway, earning nine Tony Award nominations and a win for Keenan-Bolger. The play also received positive reviews; the four-star To Kill a Mockingbird review on New York Theatre Guide reads, "Sorkin and his director Bartlett Sher stage it primarily as a scorching courtroom drama, folding it seamlessly with scenes from Finch's home life as his two worlds collide."

The cast at the time of closing included Greg Kinnear as Atticus Finch, Baize Buzan as Scout, Portia as Calpurnia, Hunter Parrish as Jem Finch, Michael Braugher as Tom Robinson, Russell Harvard as Link Deas, Neal Huff as Bob Ewell, Erin Wilhelmi as Mayella Ewell, Noah Robbins as Dill Harris, Zachary Booth as Horace Gilmer, Gordon Clapp as Judge John Taylor, Patricia Conolly as Mrs. Dubose, Christopher Innvar as Sheriff Heck Tate, Ted Koch as Mr. Cunningham, and Amelia McClain as Miss Stephanie.

To Kill a Mockingbird is currently on a North American tour through July 2023 and also has a production in London's West End.

Sorkin will continue to be represented on Broadway with a revival of Camelot at Lincoln Center Theater in spring 2023. He is writing a new book for the 1960 Lerner & Loewe musical.

^{Photo credit: To Kill a Mockingbird (Photo courtesy of production)}