The skill to successfully re-imagine what is known to all and revered by many is not a talent to be taken lightly.

So perhaps screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s script for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the play which opened Tuesday, Dec. 27 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, is the biggest star of this impressive and satisfying production.

Along with J.D. Salinger’s  “The Catcher in the Rye,” Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been an eternal staple of YA fiction in American life, the late 20th Century standard as junior high — before that was reinvented as middle school — reading in 8th grade English classes.

In this era, while “Catcher” largely disappeared from the public eye, Lee’s tale of racial injustice on gruesome display in the courtroom and life of a small Southern town persists, particularly since the pernicious stain of racism on American life has refused to fade, much less disappear.

However, the 2015 release of Lee’s previously unknown and unpublished first draft of the novel, called “Go Set a Watchman,” cast a lengthy shadow on “Mockingbird” itself.

In her earlier version, Lee cast the figure of moral salvation, attorney Atticus Finch, as an unabashed racist. In more than a few quarters, disillusionment with “Mockingbird” set in.

Sorkin’s 2018 dramatization restores and, to these eyes, enlivens the mythical work’s luster in two ways.

The writer fashions a supple weave of scenes to create a vivid and dramatic arc. In the book, Scout, Finch’s impetuous daughter, energetically tries to make sense of adult events occurring around her. The play now centers on a court trial — a White woman accuses a Black man of rape — and its aftermaths, with Finch as the focal character.

Not to panic: the beloved Scout, along with her brother Jem and their new friend Dill, is still a lively, constant presence in Sorkin’s telling. The trio act as an animated Greek chorus, literally bounding through scenes, trying to puzzle out the many mysteries that persist in their neighborhood and its, at times, menacing streets.

Sorkin’s other strength is his irresistible dialogue.

The cadences of his language lands well on our modern ears yet is never anachronistic to the time period, which is the summer of 1934.

There are 19 speaking roles and pretty much every interchange is impactful, from casual, telling asides — a judge’s resigned remark to the court: “I’d like to keep our 10-minute breaks to 15 minutes” — to haymaker observations, like this from Finch to his children: “A mob is a place where people go to take a break from their conscience.”

But this show is far more than the best fictional podcast you ever listened to. Director Bartlett Sher seemingly can’t go wrong in his Broadway productions — mainly musicals — of properties from the past.

Here, his pacing of the short, interweaving scenes which crest on the fluid dialogue make for a compelling whole, rather than merely engaging moments.  Miriam Buether’s simple, lovely sets are moved on and off in sync with the swiftly flowing pace.

The Segerstrom Hall can physically, at times, loom too large for even some of the bigger musicals, but this focused and realized production lands comfortably on the audience.

The performances in this touring production offer a lot to be satisfied with, too.

Star power, of course, is a pleasant plus at the center of touring shows that come our way and there’s no disappointment this time with veteran actor Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch.

Finch is a character in search of the good in anyone — especially so when it isn’t there to be found — and Thomas seems a natural fit for this practiced passivity, but then, either while suddenly attack-dogging a crucial, lying witness or, physically, taking matters into his own hands when past his own breaking point, Thomas expertly channels the character’s hidden complexities.

The other showy role here is Scout, a character who is the Meta tomboy of American literature. Both narrator and character — for most of the show, as a 6-9 year-old — Scout, (as well as Jem and Dill) is played by an adult actor. Melanie Moore has a nice stridency in her delivery as the youthful truth teller who may not understand everything going on but is not going to ever be shy in delivering the news about it.

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As tragic victim Tom Robinson, accused of the rape, Yaegel T. Welch conveys with resignation the inevitabilities with what passes for justice a Black man facing an all-white jury. Bob Ewell, the play’s embodiment of evil and source of the children’s underlying question at the start of play — “how could Bob Ewell fall on his own knife?” — is played with a weasel-y unsavoriness by Joey Collins (this is a compliment to the rail-thin actor).

Note especially deserves to be paid of one of the town’s other virulent racists, Mrs. Henry Dubose. A neighbor feared by the children, she is deathly ill, on morphine and thus deserving of sympathy, according to Finch.

The role here is played by actress Mary Badham, who was Scout in the 1962 movie version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” with Gregory Peck. Six decades later in her new role, Badham sells her character’s rancid disposition, a shrill croak at the children: “Don’t look at my Camelias!”  (Jem subsequently beheads the flowers as soon as he can).

Chances are you’ll leave this play satisfied and with much to talk about. And it’s a guarantee you’ll be quoting many of the lines.

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of 4)

When: Through Jan. 8; 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m., Sundays

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Tickets: $49-$129

Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org