Theatre in Review: Of Mice and Men (Longacre Theatre)

	James Franco, Chris O'Dowd. Photo: Richard Phibbs

Of Mice and Men is one of the many celebrity-driven productions that define Broadway today, but to my mind the real star of the show is the director, Anna D. Shapiro. Her special gift is to take diverse groups of actors and blend them into seamless ensembles. She did it with August: Osage County, although admittedly she had the Steppenwolf Theatre to work with; even later additions to that production, including Elizabeth Ashley and Phylicia Rashad, fit right in as if they had been on board since day one. At the Longacre, notice how she blends a couple of film stars (one with little or no stage experience), an ingénue from television, and a supporting cast of stage regulars, making all of them plausibly inhabit the harsh, hardscrabble world of a Depression-era farm.

As is often the case with John Steinbeck, the play's author, we are in California's Salinas Valley, and, as depicted by the set designer Todd Rosenthal, it is as desolate as Death Valley. The opening scene, set on the bank of a river, is dominated by a sheer mountain cliff rent in two, offering only a glimpse of sky; a few scattered bits of scrub provide the only greenery. On the farm, the action is largely confined to a shabby bunkhouse on which one could plausibly stage Stalag 17 or some other prisoner-of-war drama. The other two interiors, a barn and a lean-to, are scarcely more inviting.

The designer's approach is thoroughly appropriate, because the world of Steinbeck's play is a harsh and loveless environment in which work is the only measure of a man's worth. Women, if they are present at all, function as objects of lust or inchoate longing. In one of the play's more telling scenes, two men trade notes on two brothels in the nearby town. One of them, we are told, is vastly superior -- the madam is full of jokes, the whiskey is inexpensive, and the girls are clean. What else could anyone want?

In a play with nearly a dozen characters, there are only two affectional relationships. The first is between Candy, the oldest of the farmhands, and his dog. Candy had his hand mangled in an accident and is now reduced to doing odd jobs; he knows his days of employment are numbered. His dog, the only creature that matters to him, is old and ailing; one of the most touching details of Shapiro's production is the little bed that Candy has made, next to his bunk, for the dog's comfort. Carlson, another farmhand, can't stand the dog -- he claims the animal "stinks" -- and rallies the rest of the men to demand that it be put down. Afraid to make trouble and hasten his exit, Candy agrees to the plan; in a scene of terrible suspense, Carlson takes the dog outside and, as the men go about their business, chatting and playing cards, we see the desolation on Candy's face as he waits for the gunshot. As Candy, Jim Norton carries off this moment superbly; he also quietly signals the character's unspoken terror of being found obsolete.

The other, more central, pairing is that of George and Lennie, who come to the farm hoping to raise enough cash to purchase a place of their own. George is an ordinary working stiff, worn down by long hours of grueling labor and of shouldering the burden of Lennie, who is mentally disabled. Chris O'Dowd pulls off an astonishing transformation as Lennie -- a hulking presence with an odd affect, including an inability to make eye contact, awkward hand gestures, and the sound of a child as channeled through the vocal equipment of a middle-aged man. Lennie loves to pet soft, furry animals, but his attentions are so ardent that he usually does them harm; when we first see him, he is toting a mouse that he has unintentionally killed. Later, he is given a puppy, and his repeated attentions to the little animal prove equally fatal. These are not the only situations in which he doesn't know his own strength: Aroused by the taunts and blows of a bully, he can do real damage to a man.

Next to O'Dowd's stunning work -- he bears almost no resemblance to the photo of himself on the cover of the Playbill -- it would be easy to overlook James Franco's understated performance -- his flat vocal delivery, a face that radiates exhaustion, eyes forever furtively seeking troubles to be evaded. You feel his frustration at constantly watching out for Lennie, but when he once again spins a vision of their life together on the farm they hope to buy, you can see him selling the dream to himself as well as his friend. Losing his temper, he howls at Lennie, "I wish I could put you in a cage," standing over him, terrorizing him by repeatedly slapping his hands together, then, a minute later, wearily returning to the business of tending to him. Franco and O'Dowd play off each other beautifully; it's easy to believe they have been yoked together since childhood in a tangle of affection, anger, and responsibility.

Not all that much happens in Of Mice and Men: George tries to keep Lennie out of trouble with the other men, especially Curley, the foreman, who is insanely jealous of the young wife he doesn't know how to keep. (Leighton Meester, of TV's Gossip Girl, is thoroughly fine as the wife, a pretty, empty-headed young thing who married on impulse and spends her days mired in boredom and regret, dreaming of a career in the movies.) Curley goes too far with his taunts at Lennie, leading to a brutally violent encounter. George and Lennie team up with Candy, who has some cash in the bank, to realize their homestead dream sooner rather than later, but from the very beginning it is clear that it can never be, and, when Lennie has a fateful encounter with Curley's wife, George has to make a wrenching, potentially soul-killing decision.

By placing these two sort-of love stories against a background of physical and emotional desolation, Steinbeck heightens them, lending tremendous force to their tragic outcomes. This is a world in which any kind of human connection is viewed with suspicion. Curley both stifles and neglects his wife and, because she is pretty and lonely, the men view her as a tramp; the notion of George and Lennie's partnership is so unheard-of that at least one of the hands snidely insinuates that they are lovers. Shapiro's deft handling of her gifted cast brings this world to heartrending life. In addition to the four performances already mentioned, Ron Cephas Jones is memorable as Crooks, the stable hand, who is made to live in isolation because he is black; Alex Morf makes each of his scenes crackle with Curley's barely contained rage, and Joel Marsh Garland is fine as Carlson, who thoughtlessly leads the campaign against Candy's dog.

In addition to Rosenthal's setting, Japhy Weideman's lighting has a bleak grandeur, especially when he floods a barn interior with strong sidelight. Suttirat Larlarb's costumes look like they came right out of a Walker Evans photograph. The sound design, by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, consists of an expansive array of effects, including cicadas, birdsong, and a game of horseshoes, plus reinforcement for David Singer's melancholic guitars.

Interestingly, at the performance I attended, Franco and O'Dowd didn't get entrance applause -- a rare, almost unheard-of turn of events on Broadway. Somehow, I suspect that Shapiro's staging of the play's opening prevented it. It's another sign of the purity of her vision, of what life was like -- and sometimes still is -- in America for those who live beyond the reach of the safety net. Steinbeck is sometimes accused of being a sentimentalist, but the charge won't stick here: This is a world where love is a liability for those who want to survive.--David Barbour