'Of Mice and Men' resonates

UD ensemble gives heartbreaking tale a vivid reality that never rings hollow
By Tom Butler
Special to the News Journal
March 1, 2009

Blending powerful naturalistic performances with some innovative staging techniques and video clips, the University of Delaware's Resident Ensemble Players celebrate John Steinbeck's birthday with an engaging version of the author's iconic "Of Mice and Men."

The grim depiction of hope and desperation in the America of the Great Depression takes on added resonance during the current economic crisis.

Director Adrian Hall makes his political position apparent from the opening clips of Franklin D. Roosevelt offering glimmers of hope to his constituents. After five years, the number of people on "relief" was finally diminishing. The irony of the comment in the face of our current surge in unemployment is direct.

But this is a play, not a tract, and the video clip fades into a shot of Shirley Temple singing and dancing and dissolves to the entrance of a pair of drifting day laborers trying to survive a brutal and inhospitable economy.

George (Michael Gotch) and Lennie (Mark Corkins) are strangely matched but at least matched.

George is articulate and thoughtful, a bit less cynical than many who work on ranches. Lennie is mentally slow and childlike but incredibly strong and capable of endless labor. They have traveled together for years, with George looking after Lennie and encouraging him with stories about a farm they will someday own. Their dream is simple but George tells it well and Lennie whose great pleasures are food and stroking small soft things like mice and rabbits never tires of it.

There is already a sense of foreboding. Lennie has had problems before, unintentionally hurting things and even people, doing "bad things" and forcing the pair to flee.

The story is simple if heartbreaking. The dream is almost realized but reality 1930's America is far too brutal to permit such possibilities.

Gotch has the idiom of the itinerant farmhand of the period under perfect control. The old-fashioned slang and swearing become direct and convincing in normal dialogue and almost poetic when George spins his dream to Lennie and the other downtrodden inhabitants of the bunkhouse.

Corkins gives Lennie a halting nasal voice and rote responses but makes the contrast between the man's simple hopes and desires and his terrifying physical strength very specific. The audience gets to see Lennie as a distinct and very specific person, not just as a type.

The interaction of these two characters is central to the performance and it never rings hollow.

The ensemble provides excellent support.

Guest artist M.A. Taylor creates a vivid portrait of Candy, the handicapped old guy who cleans up the bunkhouse. He has lost his hand on the ranch and they keep him on as long as he can do something. Taylor's choice of dialect and his ability to suggest the movements and gestures of an impaired old man enrich the dialogue and action.

Mic Matarrese also offers solid work as Slim, the most humane and successful of the ranch hands. John Plumpis makes Curley, the clear villain of the piece, believable and Carine Montbertrand gives Curley's wife both the vulnerability and the tawdry seductiveness the role requires. Her fuzzy red high heels are a great costume choice. Her scene with Lennie in the hayloft is stunning as both characters talk to each other passionately but never communicate at all.

Director Hall, a nationally revered figure, has again staged an insightful piece of theater for Delaware audiences. The massive set by Stefanie Hansen uses raw wood and simple lighting to create a variety of spaces for the action and manages to convey the claustrophobic nature of the bunkhouse as well as to suggest the vastness of the barn.

"Of Mice and Men" presents a sad and painful story. But this is a remarkable evening of theater that is well worth experiencing.

The review was originally posted here.