STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

"Of Mice and Men" at North Coast Rep

10/25/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Jacob Sidney (left) and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper in "Of Mice and Men."    Photo by Aaron Rumley
         The stage adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” may be just “the next best thing” to reading the 1937 novella, but it contains a dramatic potency all ifs own. Steinbeck’s words seamlessly transfer from one medium to the other, as does the lyricism of his statements about loneliness and about the hardest to comprehend of life’s tragic inevitabilities. As demonstrated by North Coast Repertory Theatre’s at-once brutal and understated production of the play (which also debuted in 1937, in San Francisco), the live action can heighten the anxieties of the storytelling and the truths inherent in Steinbeck’s discourse on humanity. The tension inside the theater at North Coast Rep, for example, is excruciating in the weighty moments precipitating the “mercy killing” of an old dog, and later, when the childlike goliath Lennie (Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper) is alone with the flirtatious wife of a hothead ranch hand.
        Director Richard Baird has conceived an adaptation that is startling in its sequences of violence, yet wistful and even tender in its depiction of two unlikely, Depression-era friends reaching for a shared dream: a little farm where the protective George (Jacob Sidney) and manchild Lennie can live off “the fat of the land.” This is a lengthy production (three acts, with an intermission) but a well-paced one true to the narrative’s ever-present apprehensions.
       While Sidney and especially Mongiardo-Cooper are outstanding, they are not alone in vividly inhabiting Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley ranch characters. John Greenleaf is affecting as the desperately hopeful old Candy, who longs to join George and Lennie in a better life somewhere. J. Stephen Brantley exudes all the goodness that is inside the laconic jerkline skinner Slim. Laurence Brown, as Crooks, the one black man on the ranch, richly embodies a figure who is, like Lennie, an outsider, and who most expresses the story’s undercurrent of loneliness.
        “Of Mice and Men” – the novella and the play – is 80 years old now, but it’s hard to imagine a time when its view of a world both merciless and merciful won’t matter. (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/25/17.)
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page