04.09.2026
While this play was well acted and well composed, and I enjoyed it, it is a fact that the legal culture of the West is completely defunct. I have been arguing this throughout my higher education life. Where is the proof? The book and the play ends on a lie. It ends on concealment. It ends on silence. And this is what it presents as justice. The book and the play destroy the voice of a poor woman. They present the poor oppressed woman as a murderer and liar, a perjurer. As a villain. It is these things that I have been arguing and fighting against my whole life. Because I have raised not in the legal culture of the West, but in the legal culture of Punjab. Where we are open, honest and where the poor oppressed woman is our goddess, our hero.
The legal ethics are questioned. Even in the play itself, Atticus Finch, the lawyer hero, he is criticised by Calpurnia who is the Afro-Carribbean help that he gets for his attitude to racial justice, his expectation that she be grateful to him for doing what any just man should do.
The play could be seen as an attempt to reconcile racists and the left, just as in the book itself. With that magic mantra to try and crawl into someone’s skin before you judge them and respond with violence. The law is contrasted with mob violence and lynching, the lawyer with civilisation and those that move outside of the law with brutality and oppression. The sad thing is, that it is the law that is oppression. Clearly, for example, Atticus represents the father figure who orders around his grown son as The Law. He is patriarchal oppression masquerading as love.
It was good storytelling. But with the wrong message. It was good acting. But the actions and the words were not good. But what happens with this wrong ending? The audience were clapping and cheering away. There were standing ovations. It is the Western legal culture.
They injected comedy into the play, just as there was comedy in the book. It was genuinely funny at times. They had good bit parts that were played and structural in getting us into the story and feeling something. The accents were good. It was very powerful too, particularly the performance by the actor that played Tom Robinson.
A major theme of the play is that a man will have his dignity. There were some liberties taken with the original play, including a fight scene featuring Atticus which derailed the message of pacifism somewhat and shows that the law which he represents is just naked violence which tries to conceal itself, duress and coercion.
This book, I studied it in school. I got an ‘A’ grade. Maybe it even inspired me just a little to study law and fight for the oppressed, although my main inspiration was from Dr. Ambedkar who my grandfather worshipped, as well as Indian films like Damini with my favourite actor, Sunny Deol. But I have moved on from this Western legal culture in the book and in this play. A well executed wrong message about the law is how I see it. An exposure of what is corrupt in Western law. This is what I’m fighting against.
