Aaron Sorkin’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ adaptation makes its Canadian debut in Off-Mirvish season

Aaron Sorkin’s Tony Award-winning adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” will lead off the 2023/24 Off-Mirvish season, Mirvish has announced.

“With productions from Toronto, Halifax, Broadway and London’s West End, this Off-Mirvish lineup showcases the best of four important English-language communities,” David Mirvish said in a news release.

“It’s also a season of classics reimagined. Two classics of literature are newly adapted for the stage. And two classics of 20th-century theatre are given new life.”

The season starts Nov. 21 to 27 with “Mockingbird,” which Oscar and Emmy winner Sorkin (“The Social Network,” “The West Wing”) adapted from the both revered and reviled Harper Lee novel about a white lawyer defending a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman.

Sorkin’s Broadway adaptation won praise for challenging the book’s portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch as a paragon of virtue and for giving the novel’s two Black characters more to say. It was nominated for nine Tonys and won Best Actress in a Play for Celia Keenan-Bolger.

The Mirvish production, at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, will be the play’s Canadian premiere.

Next up, another beloved novel gets a rethink with “Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of).”

The adaptation by Isobel McArthur of Jane Austen’s most famous novel won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Play after its 2021 run on London’s West End.

Described as “‘Pride and Prejudice’ with a party vibe,” the play tells the story of the romantic adventures of the Bennet sisters through their servants’ eyes with pop music renditions as part of the mix. It runs Dec. 14 to Jan. 7, 2024 at the CAA Theatre.

Mirvish is bringing back a local hit with the Crow’s Theatre production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

The Star’s theatre critics named it one of their top picks of 2022, writing that it “managed to preserve the stakes and esthetic of Czarist Russia but with none of the dustiness,” and “showed the work of Chekhov at its best, with nuanced characters and moody atmosphere to boot.”

The play, adapted by Liisa Repo-Martell, runs Feb. 2 to 25, 2024 at the CAA Theatre.

Finally, Mirvish will present a new version of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” from Halifax’s Neptune Theatre.

The title roles of the two minor “Hamlet” characters in the comedy are played by Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan of the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

It runs March 5 to 24, 2024 at the CAA Theatre.

The Off-Mirvish season is now on sale at mirvish.com.

Correction — May 23, 2023: This story has been edited from an earlier version that said all Off-Mirvish productions were playing the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Culture section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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