'Of Mice and Men' resonates

By Howard Shapiro
March 2, 2009

John Steinbeck's short novel Of Mice and Men, in its stage version, is a piece of putty in a director's hands. In a new adaptation by Delaware's Resident Ensemble Players, it's not just cerebral, it's smart. The estimable Adrian Hall, who founded Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island, led the Dallas Theater Center, and directs around the country, is responsible for the new adaptation and its fluid staging.

When Steinbeck turned his bleak novella over to the stage in 1937, his script doctor and director was playwright George S. Kaufman. Steinbeck - not much on script dialogue even though his novella reads like a play - holed up in Kaufman's Bucks County home while the two polished the piece.

Hall takes their work and adds dialogue from the novella, giving this theatrical version more of Steinbeck's voice. He stages it with the Repertory Ensemble Players' superb cast as a one-act whose length - nearly two hours - is not an issue; as the story of two migrant farmworkers making their way through the Great Depression unfolds, it also zips along.

This is the first full season for the repertory theater, established by the University of Delaware in Newark as the professional component of its theater program, and under the artistic direction of Sanford Robbins.

The group has quickly jelled into a producing force that justifies the university's support, which extends to obviously subsidized ticket prices for an Actors Equity union house: the highest price is $20, the lowest, $14, not counting deals.

What you get in Of Mice and Men is a lot of bang for that sort of buck. Hall's production focuses on the strong-as-a-bull, addle-brained Lennie (Mark Corkins in a performance that nails the character's childlike innocence), one of the two roamers. Here, the mind of Lennie, who causes trouble unwillingly and unwittingly, is clearly on display. You can watch his wheels turning, or sometimes not. You may have seen the play before, but likely not in a production that explores its main character quite so thoroughly.

Lennie's constant companion, George, is given a solid, no-nonsense interpretation by Michael Gotch, and the other farmhands they join in a California bunkhouse make the play real on Stefanie Hansen's convincing set.

Lanky Mic Matarrese as a farm supervisor and M.A. Taylor as an older worker are outstanding. John Plumpis is an effectively menacing farm owner's son, and Carine Montbertrand is equally fine as his vixen wife. Cameron Knight gives a facile portrayal of the black farmhand, broken by - maybe stronger for - the racism he endures.

Of Mice and Men has new resonance now, in our current depressed economy. But the reason to see this well-considered production has less to do with relevance than with revelation.

The review was originally posted here.