Looking at the haunting set for Intiman Theatre’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is like looking at an abstract painting. The walls and floors of the decrepit shacks aren’t plumb. The angles go every which way. The shacks have long since lost their paint, so the sooty-looking blacks and grays contrast so completely with the set’s eye-catching big red tree, which is strewn with hanging red chairs.

The set was masterminded by Alec Hammond, who is making his design debut at Intiman. Though new to Intiman, the Amherst- and Yale-trained Hammond has proved his talents with many other theater and film scene stealers, including the next-generation jumbo jet that he created from nose to tail for the film “Flightplan,” with Jodie Foster.

As in “Flightplan,” Hammond puts us in the moment. There’s no curtain for “Mockingbird.” The actors use the entire theater, many times entering and exiting scenes through the audience. During the courtroom scene, the audience is “the audience” and the jury. In another scene, we become the target at the end of a shotgun sight. It is an intimate setting, maybe even uncomfortably so at times. But with this intimacy, Hammond has bagged one of the main themes of “To Kill a Mockingbird”: To get past prejudice, one must climb into the skin of the other person and walk around in it.

That lesson and the solid cast of vulnerable and classically Southern characters of Harper Lee’s story make this Intiman production powerful and poignant. We are riveted, repulsed by our own flaws yet somewhat redeemed in the end knowing the eyes of a child have been opened, and through such knowledge, change might one day occur. Intiman has constructed a must-see show and it’s no wonder the theater has extended its run for a second time with additional performances through Nov. 10.

Harper Lee’s story is seen through the eyes of a child, Scout Finch, who is growing up in Depression-struck Maycomb, Ala., with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus Finch. Atticus is a lawyer who has been chosen to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman.

Scout is played flawlessly by 11-year-old Keaton Whittaker, who treats us to Scout’s energetic tomboyishness. We watch spellbound as she bounces around the stage like a golfball, never letting her physical antics interfere with her accurate delivery or her earnest performance. Keaton is fun to watch and provides the necessary light-heartedness in this drama. However, her clincher line about putting Boo Radley on trial would be like “killing a mockingbird,” certainly reminds us that for all her youthfulness, Scout has matured enough to know how to protect the innocence of her friend.

Atticus is played by David Bishins, who delivered us a highly capable and self-confident leading man. We watched, wishing Atticus would tuck us in at night and also handle all our legal affairs. Bishins’ stirring courtroom soliloquy made us all the more sad when it ultimately failed. But Bishins made us believers, at least for that moment, that all men are created equal in our courts and made us want to restore Tom Robinson to his family.

These two central characters are joined by a strong supporting cast. Some standouts include defendant Tom Robinson, who was played with lots of emotion by Sean Phillips. Patti Cohenour was wonderful as neighbor Maudie Atkinson, whose fact-of-the-matter pronouncements added humor and insight. Josephine Howell was delightful as the Finch’s housekeeper and nanny, Calpurnia. The pathetic Mayella Ewell, as played by Liz Morton, and her despicable dad Bob Ewell, as played by Russell Hodgkinson, together delivered a stellar brand of evilness that brought them some well-earned “boos” at the end.

@2. Photo Credit WIRE:Chris Bennion photo

Nick Robinson (Jem), Keaton Whittaker (Scout), Lino Marioni (Dill) and William Hall Jr. (Reverend Sykes) in Intiman Theatre’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”