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Peer Reviews Wayward Actors Company presents Reviewed by Cory Vaughn Entire contents are copyright © 2009 Cory Vaughn. All rights reserved.
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men needs little introduction, because most of us read in high school or college. If you haven't, contact my editor and I'll give you a more detailed summary over a pint. Suffice it to say that Wayward Actors Company ends their current season with a very faithful and well-acted production of it. You have one more weekend to watch this Great American Tragedy brought to life at the Martin Experimental Theatre by this near-perfect cast. How good is this production? The MeX is one of my least favorite spaces for theatre in town, and they managed to make me forget that I was there. George Milton (Joe Hatfield, doing some of his best work here) and Lenny Small (John Hess, President of Wayward) are Depression-era transient farm hands in California. George is short, surly, and practical; Lenny is a gentle, gigantic ox of a man with the mind of a child and a fascination with all things soft and fuzzy. He also has a tendency to get George into trouble. George has been looking after Lenny since Lenny's aunt died, and the two of them have been traveling together from ranch to ranch. Lenny is a burden that George thinks he doesn't want, but he also gives meaning to George's life; they dream of raising enough money to buy a place of their own where they can "live off the fat of the land," where they can work for themselves and no one else; and where Lenny can achieve his only ambition, to tend the rabbits. Every night before bed, Lenny begs George repeatedly to tell him about the house and the farm they hope to buy one day, to tell "how it's gonna be for guys like us." George humors him by telling the story exactly the same way every time because it keeps Lenny quiet and hard at work, and George has told the story so many times by now that he is beginning to believe it himself. Their best-laid plans (hence the title of the play) become a simple but powerful recipe for a classic story of the American Dream, before the phrase was officially coined. That's all you really need to know going in; then you can sit on the edge of your seat as Steinbeck's character study of a nation and its people during hard times plays itself out on one unidentified ranch where George hopes they can raise the money they need, if he can get Lenny to keep his trap shut and stay out of trouble. It is there that they befriend the other farm hands and a crippled old cook and bunkhouse-swamper named Candy (Cy Webber), who comes to buy into their dreams even more than they do; it is also there that they endure the bullying of their boss's hot-tempered, diminutive son Curly (Tim Curtsinger) and the flirtations of the hoity-toity tart (Meghan Logue) that Curly has woefully chosen as his wife, as the story chugs along with them toward its lonely and inevitable conclusion. Director Mike Seely has assembled an impressive cast of actors, each bringing their own distinctive personality traits to their iconic characters, with energy in abundance between them. Indeed, I can't recall a single weak link in the entire chain! Hatfield and Hess are well-matched as the leads – Hatfield finds the right notes of weariness and resignation in George as the tragedy spins further and further out of control in Act II, while Hess throws himself head-first into Lenny's unique thought process, and succeeds in producing a voice and physical presence that seems right for the character without reminding me of John Malkovich in Gary Sinise's superb 1992 film version. They receive particularly strong support from Webber as the kindly old swamper, beaten down by life and about a week or two away from being put out to pasture with an old, sick dog as his only friend in the world, and from Tom Pettey as Slim, the no-nonsense veteran foreman who takes George under his wing. Curtsinger, not content to make Curly a one-dimensional villain, wrings from his underwritten role all the bitterness and cowardice I remembered from the book, but what surprises me more and more as I think back over the performance is that he actually tops it by allowing us – very subtly, very quietly, and only for a few fleeting moments – to see that Curly is just as frustrated and unfulfilled as George, Lenny, Candy, and the others. And damn it all! He actually loves (as best as he can) his poisonous wife, played by Logue as the remnants of an overgrown child, full of promise and on the verge of a disappointing adulthood. I didn't expect to feel as sorry for these de facto villains as I did. Ogen Buckner, Frank Whitaker, Kevin Butler, and director Seely each carve out unique characterizations in smaller "functionary" roles. Seely, I should mention, is a last-minute replacement for the actor who previously played the role of the ranch superintendent, and does an admirable job on less preparation. The entire cast truly brings Steinbeck's characters to life just as I imagined them on the page! Well, almost. The size difference between Hess's Lenny and the other characters, particularly Curly, of which much is made in both the book and the play, is not quite as pronounced here as it probably should be to justify Curly's Little-Man complex or the bullying that it brings out during one crucial scene, but the performances are so good that this amounts to little more than a brief distraction that I quickly got over. Seely has paced the production well, for the most part, although at the performance I attended, the first scene break seemed to take much too long. He has worked around the constraints of the MeX surprisingly well; furniture is limited to three bunks, a few bales of hay, and a creaky old screen door with an entire world beyond it that we can only imagine, and the rest is handled with an array of simple but realistic props. The only miscalculation, I'm afraid, is the soundtrack. The music chosen to fill the time in which sets are changed, mostly variations on Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land", is too upbeat, and often at right-angles with the mood of the scene that precedes it. Of Mice and Men is a triumphant end to Wayward's Season of Charity, during which they have graciously donated one dollar from the proceeds of each ticket sold to a different charity for every production. This time, the beneficiary – appropriately enough, given Lenny's affliction – is Down Syndrome of Louisville. A good show, and a good cause. What more could I possibly ask? NOTE: The play contains adult language and situations, a little blood during one scene, and gunfire.
Of Mice and Men Presented at the Martin Experimental (MeX) Theatre, Opened June 19, 2009. Remaining performances: Tickets: $15 Starring: Joseph Hatfield, John Hess, Cy Webber, Tom Pettey, Meghan Logue, Tim Curtsinger, Ogen Buckner, Kevin Butler, Frank Whitaker, and Mike Seely
Posted June 25, 2009
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