If at any point during your adolescence you spent many an evening revising for a GCSE English Literature exam, you’ll know this one all too well – it's a classic for a reason. A tale of companionship, tribulations and loss, set in the throes of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice And Men’ is one that many of us over a certain age will (sometimes begrudgingly) still know off by heart, so I was interested to see it played out on stage rather than broken down and copiously highlighted. It tells the tale of George and Lennie – two friends travelling the country together, working on ranches to earn enough of a keep to buy their own farm and live out their American Dream. George spends his time taking care of simple-minded Lennie, keeping him out of trouble despite the issues that his brute strength and slow nature cause them.
For me, knowing the story inside out gave me the opportunity to focus solely on the production values and the performances themselves; although in this case, I’m not sure whether this was a good thing. The source material itself is mainly dialogue which you’d think would lend itself well to the stage - however, it seemed to create a drawn-out and slowed-down version of a story which is supposed to span only 4 days, but in this instance seemed far longer. The first half of the performance sees George and Lennie reach their job at a new ranch, after fleeing their previous home due to a misunderstanding with Lennie and a local woman. We see them on the road together, talking about their dreams – and here we see Lennie’s slow wittedness come into play from the offset, with his forgetful nature and inability to understand the consequences of his actions causing a rift from the start.
William Young played a gentle giant well, if a little difficult to understand at times; although with the nature of the character, the way this is played could be down to a personal preference. Most of the first half relies heavily on emotional monologues from George (Tom McCall) who was one of the strongest performances of the night, easily portraying both the frustration and the compassion of the character wonderfully. However, the first act took a long while to reach its dramatic culmination; which, despite being one of the most pivotal points of the story, still seemed to fall short of achieving the emotional climax it could have delivered. From the moment George and Lennie arrive at the latest ranch we see them warned away from a couple of troublesome characters – Curley (Riad Richier) the Bosses no-good son, and his wife (Maddy Hill) who’s known for being a flirt – and unluckily her husband is known for not being best pleased about it.
At the end of Act 1 we see Curly throwing around accusations regarding his wife, which leads to the show’s only fight scene in which Lennie, with his brute strength and desperation to defend his friends, crushes Curley’s hand completely. Despite being the first moment we really see Lennie’s strength, and the first time the audience can really see the trouble the duo are headed towards, it seemed rather clumsy and rushed – if it wasn’t for the dialogue, it would have been difficult to understand one of the key moments of the story from the performance alone.
The second act fared better in creating more emotional depth to the characters and keeping up the pace - I was pleased to see more of Curley’s wife, as in my opinion this was one of the stronger performances, and her monologue in the lead-up to the show’s culmination created some beautiful moments of tension. It’s at this point we see the true danger Lennie poses, despite his not knowing; obsessed with the feel of soft things, we’d already heard of his being run out of town over touching a woman’s red dress, seen him cry over a soft dead mouse, watching him accidentally kill a newborn puppy from being pet too hard – so when Curley’s wife lets him touch her soft hair, you know it spells trouble. She screams, he panics, he grabs her too hard and just like that he’s snapped her neck – again, a little too rushed for such an important moment, but staged a little better.
The most emotional moment of the story was, as I’d hoped, the ending – George's desperation to save his friend from the angry mob, his inner turmoil of knowing just how much danger Lennie can be, and his exasperation at what needs to be done. In the book, there’s a little dialogue towards the end – George twisting the truth to the rest of the men, telling them he had to wrestle a gun from Lennie and an accident ensued – but my favourite aspect of this production is that they ended the show right on the gunshot. The cut to black hit hard and the silence was deafening – it was the last few moments of the show that were its most redeeming feature.
Overall, if you’re a student or a teacher and you’re watching to study then this works well – it stays true to the source material and the simply stylised set makes it easy to focus on the narrative. But if, like me and many others, you know the story well then it might not be for you – it’s not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t stand out in any way. But it’s a classic for a reason, and this certainly keeps to it.
Reviewer - Hazel Kaye on - 11.5.23
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