>>REVIEW
OF MICE AND MEN
Theatre Calgary and CanStage, Toronto
Runs until October 7
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.
That well-worn colloquialism may not be in John Steinbeck’s self-written stage adaptation of Of Mice and Men, a novel set in the rough-and-tumble world of itinerant farming in Depression-era California, but it has a particular resonance in Theatre Calgary’s latest co-production with Toronto’s CanStage just the same.
Director Dennis Garnhum, whose previous production in Edmonton garnered him two Sterling awards, has taken a palpably light touch with much of the play, lending a kind of down-home charm that naturally complements its comedic elements. One of the play’s central characters, Lenny (Ashley Wright), certainly provides ample opportunity to be milked for comedic effect – a gentle simpleton, his childlike mind makes him a constant source of innocent mistakes. But taken as a whole, these moments of comedy begin to eat steadily away at the tragic desperation that draws the play’s central characters, each in need of a sheltering friendship, together.
The play’s central focus, Lenny and George (Shaun Smyth) embody this need, a pair of wandering farmhands whose relationship represents the closest thing either has to a home. Anomalies on the farm where they come to work, their fellow workers recognize that it is their bond that maintains them both, the promise of something beyond a month’s work. It is precisely because of these characters’ importance that Lenny’s ineptitude, though endearing, cannot be touched lightly.
While on their own these moments are simply a matter of interpretation – a gentler approach to a harsh world – in tandem with the bizarre alchemy of its audience, the result is a narrative sapped of its drive and replaced with laughs. In the play’s myriad moments of tragedy, what follows is usually preceded by a few nervous laughs as the audience awkwardly switches emotional gears.
Frustratingly, the production is otherwise a stellar display of both talent and production values. Allan Stichbury, serving as both costume and set designer, has created a roughly hewn world scattered with hay beneath the production’s main set piece – a giant, skeletal frame of wood. Their clothes torn and sweat-stained, the 10 characters of Steinbeck’s world wander through a world that offers no comfort, no permanent home.
It is this isolation that provides the play’s most important emotional resonance, if often undercut in the production’s drive to lighten its tone. Despite the production’s overall ambiguity, however, the play’s individual performances are strong.
As George, Smyth’s performance is a palpable mixture of frustration and self-awareness, a shrewd operator who understands, as his best friend cannot, the tenuous nature of their relationship and the power it holds for them both. Populating the farm, the cast is rounded out by an ensemble of performers, from Benjamin Clost’s fuming Curly to the even-handed understanding of John Kirk’s Slim, whose presence breathes life into Stichbury’s expansive world. Even Candy’s (Stan Lesk) dog, an aging symbol of the inevitable hopelessness of an itinerant life, arrives to steal a scene or two in the way that only dogs and children can do.
Working from a text as enduringly powerful as Of Mice and Men (a novel still read nearly 70 years after its first publishing) and complemented by a production of considerable beauty and starkness, it is a shame that in lightening his production, Garnhum has at least partially removed the weight of a deeply human tragedy. When an audience is conditioned to expect comedy, they will find it, even in a work as painfully human as Steinbeck’s. |
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