Theater Review—

Powerful Production Of A Steinbeck Classic

By Julie Stern

SHERMAN — The Sherman Players have put together a powerful production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Perfectly cast, masterfully acted, and sure-handedly directed, the show even boasts a terrific array of sets, realistically portraying a shabby bunkhouse, the room of the stable buck, and the interior of a large barn.

The story is, of course, an American classic; most high schools include it on their required reading lists, so most of the audience is aware that the story is going to end badly. However, what matters is the power of the dream to instill hope and meaning in the lives of the men who share it, and, with a production as gripping as this one, in those of us who watch it as well.

Lennie and George are an odd couple, certainly. Lennie is a hulking, child-like simpleton, powerful of body, but with the mind of a four-year-old. George is the tough, cynical drifter who took Lennie on as a partner, after the aunt who raised him died. It’s the 1930s in California’s Salinas Valley, and the two of them are migrant laborers, finding work on various ranches and farms, like so many other displaced workers during the Great Depression.

What makes them different, and sustains them, is the story George soothes and entertains Lennie with: one day, when they accumulate a large enough cash stake, they will buy their own little piece of land, where they’ll have a house, and a garden, and some pigs and chickens — and rabbits, as Lennie continually reminds him. They can stay inside if it rains; they can take an afternoon off for the circus or a ball game; they can invite a friend to stay over, and nobody can ever boss them around or fire them or abuse them.

The best part of the story is the repeated litany, that — unlike the other migrants and drifters who populate the bunkhouses, and barrooms and bawdy houses of these isolated towns — George and Lennie are not alone. They have each other. I’ll always be there for you, George tells Lennie, and you’ll be there for me. They’ll pool their wages, and save their money, and eventually they’ll have enough.

The fact that they are still broke is the result of Lennie’s tendency to get into trouble. He has a child’s desire to pet soft things — mice, rabbits, a girl’s velvet dress — But he doesn’t know his own strength, and when he gets confused, he forgets to let go. Girls scream. All too frequently they lose jobs and have to run for their lives…

The story peaks on a ranch where they can each earn $50 a month lifting sacks of barley. As some of the other ranch hands overhear the story, they get drawn in to the dream as well. It speaks to all their loneliness and desire for warmth and roots. Would there be room for an old man, who can cook, and who has his own life savings to add to the stake? What about the crippled stable buck, would they take a black man, who’d be willing to work for them for nothing?

The dream is contagious, and beautiful, but, as in the Robert Burns poem from which Steinbeck took his title, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang oft a gley, and leave us naught but sorrow and woe for promised joy.”

But I’m sure you knew that already. What matters here are the standout performances by every member of the cast, beginning with Alex Echevarria as Lennie, and James Hipp as George.

Alex Vournazos is properly vicious as the villainous Curley, and Alison Bernhardt is totally believable as his troublemaking wife.

Jeff Rossman, who gets better and better each time I see him, is fine as the old man, Candy. Jeff Solomon projects great decency as the best of the ranch hands, while Charles Roth and Paul D. Prelovsky are believably human in their ordinariness.

Julian Thomas brings dignity and pride to the role of Crooks, the stable buck, and in the small part of Curley’s father, “the boss,”  Derek O’Brien is good as well.

Much of the credit must belong to director Laura Gilbert, who has turned this into a wonderful show, as absorbing as it is moving, a tragedy in a minor key, and very much a story of America. By all means, go see it!

(Performances continue through two more weekends, until October 6, at The Sherman Playhouse.

See the Enjoy Calendar, in print and online, for curtain, ticket and other details.)