"Of Mice and Men" at the Longacre Theatre

“Of Mice and Men” opened April 16, 2014 at the Longacre Theatre.

  

Chris O'Dowd and James Franco (Photo by Richard Phibbs)

 

It’s nighttime and George and Lennie have stopped to rest on a sandy bank of the Salina River. They are heading for a job for migrant agricultural workers. The scene shifts to a bunk house where the migrants sleep and mingle.  It is here that George hopes to earn enough money to secure his dream of buying his own farm and where he and his mentally-challenged side-kick Lennie’s dream can be summed up with the immortal line, “We’ll live off the fat of the land.”

John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” is not meant to represent a timeless microcosm of life among American migrant workers during the 1930s, as does his later novel “The Grapes of Wrath.” It does, however, create its own small world with a highly stylized vision of truth. In some ways, it is as far removed from reality as the screwball film comedies from the same era. This doesn’t mean that this tale of two drifters adrift between reality and fantasy has become a fossilized relic.

Director Anna D. Shapiro has staged an unhurried but sturdily humanized production that is buoyed by the presence of two actors of note James Franco as George and Chris O’Dowd as Lennie. Although I take exception to some of her directorial decisions,  particularly the way that the final scene is staged, she succeeds in highlighting the central meaningful relationship within the play. Certainly the fraternal love between George and Lennie is even more to the point in 2014. This is the dimension of the plot that remains universal rather than the predictably tragic plot or the one dimensional supporting characters.

It is also fortunate that Franco and O’Dowd have sought to go one step beyond the more obvious and stereotypical models for their characters. Because of this, the core of the play – the strange but symbiotic relationship of two unwitting victims of the times – is able to support the weaker circumference, the vision of a social system empowered by greed and materialism.

 

Steinbeck’s play version of his novel is tied to the novel’s structure as dramatic literature, with each chapter a different scene. A few months after publication, Steinbeck began work on the stage adaptation with playwright George S. Kaufman, who would also direct the original production. This opened on Broadway less than a year after the novel’s publication on November 23, 1937 with Broderick Crawford, as Lennie and Wallace Ford, as George. Taking its title inspiration from Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse” (that “the best-laid schemes of mice and men” often go awry), the play takes place over a three-day period on a ranch in an  agricultural valley in Northern California during the Depression.

Whether Lennie may have actually been kicked in the head by a horse as a child (used by George as an excuse for Lennie), or was just born that way, O’Dowd’s performance as the tall, husky oaf with an obsession for petting small furry animals and soft sensual fabrics is deeply moving. Best known for starring in the film “Bridesmaids,” O’Dowd holds our attention by the sheer poignancy of his portrayal. Whether becoming agitated by the goading of the black stable hand or becoming sexually aroused by the insinuating moves of Curley’s wife, he makes it easy for us to respond empathetically to the simplicity of Lennie’s basic needs.

As keeper of the flame and Lennie’s fraternal protector, the multi-talented Franco (actor, director, screenwriter, producer teacher and author) commendably conveys the inner tenderness and outward strength that gives this pivotal character its principal resonance. The scenes, in which Lennie and George talk and dream of owning a farm together, are touching indeed and easily validate their friendship and the support they bring to each other. I liked the more emotionally disconnected migrant workers around them exist as distinct and illuminating worlds unto themselves.

The play reaches its most dramatic detour when a series of tragic accidents occur involving the combustible, bad-tempered Curley (Alex Morf), the farm’s bullying foreman and Curley’s manipulative, skittish wife (Leighton Meester). Jim Parrack fuels his role as Slim, the mule team foreman, with an appealing mix of compassion and virility. Notwithstanding the dying old dog and companion he drags along with him, Jim Norton targets our hearts, as the physically handicapped Candy, who regales us with a memory of his visit to a swank cat house twenty years ago. Jim Ortlieb, as The Boss, Joel Marsh Garland, as the feisty Carlson, James McMenamin, as the youthful Whit, and Ron Cephas Jones, as the embittered Crooks, contribute mightily to the reality.

Written one year before his masterpiece “The Grapes of Wrath,” but acknowledged as a stunning testament to the migrant workers who work with the dream of a better life “Of Mice and Men” is all about what Steinbeck saw first hand as a young man. What he brought to light remains true to this day only more global in its reach in light of the rampant and greedy exploitation by US companies of native workers in foreign countries.

"Of  Mice and Men"  (through July 27,2014)

For tickets ($42.00 - $135.00) call 212 - 239 - 6200