Life is tough. We don't need John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men,to remind us of that. Still, it's well worth revisiting the days of the Great Depression through Steinbeck's eloquent dialogue and well-drawn characters in the fine production at the Longacre Theater.
With an arrow aimed into the bull's eye, Anna D. Shapiro reminds us again of the isolation inherent in the human condition and the universal need for human connection. In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie have found this connection in a world where oppression rules; the powerful attack the weaker who turn on the even more vulnerable. As another migrant farm worker points out, freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world.
In a straight-ahead performance, James Franco plays the sharp, charismatic George with a wiry, almost distanced demeanor, focused on the future. His temper lives close to the surface, ready to lash out at any interference. He plans to find a small farm where he and the hulking, mentally challenged Lennie (Chris O'Dowd) can work and live their lives without interference. George himself becomes as involved as Lennie when he describes it once again to his friend. Once they have saved enough money, they will have a garden and animals, everything they l need to live independent lives and even take a day off for a baseball game if they want.
While Lennie is a simple physically powerful man, devoted to George, both need each other for protection. George is the helm for Lennie, but he also needs his bulk just as Lennie needs George's skill and savvy. George keeps Lennie out of harm's way and he finds them jobs. More than that, says George, "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. . . . With us it ain't like that. We got a future."
Lennie's trigger strength is provoked by any danger to George, and he reacts with a power nobody can manage except George. With great feeling, O'Dowd inhabits Lennie, with his lumbering stooped walk, left hand lightly moving in the air. He has a palpable sweetness, his eyes wide with innocence and helplessness, which draws him sympathy. Because Lennie loves to stroke soft things, George promises him furry rabbits to care for when they get their land.
The rest of the cast at the ranch includes the always-reliable character actor, Jim Norton (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), touching as Candy, an old-timer who has lost his usefulness and fears the future. When his old sick dog is led outside to be shot by another ranch hand, we are heartbroken for Candy. Ron Cephas Jones (Two Trains Running) plays Crooks, a bitter, world-weary African-American stable hand, a shrewd man but alone for so long that he does not even want to dream. "Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head." Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl), girlishly pretty and pencil-thin in Suttirat Larlarb's dresses, plays the restless new wife of the brutish Curley (Alex Morf), the ranch owner's son. She fails to evoke a sparkling temptress allure, but Meester grows believable in her fateful scene with Lennie where she confides her dreams of movie stardom. Although their talk leads to the inevitable tragic ending, when it comes, it still shocks.
Todd Rosenthal's expressive set design lighted by Japhy Weideman creates the vast emptiness of the California land and sky, contrasting with the dusty ranch house and Crooks' isolated stable room. John Steinbeck's themes are all here: the need for companionship in a threatening world with helpless puppies and useless old dogs, troublemaking women, frustration and oppression. The story arc is perfect and circular, and you hope the inevitable will not come. When it does, it is an ending, at least momentarily, to all dreams.
