Last Sunday afternoon, at the Longacre Theatre, four Californian Steinbeck experts went to see “Of Mice and Men,” in its first Broadway revival in forty years. The current production of Steinbeck’s 1937 play, which he adapted, with George S. Kaufman, from his novel, was nominated for two Tonys yesterday, and stars James Franco and Chris O’Dowd as the loyal, doomed bindlestiffs George Milton and Lennie Small. The production, coupled with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of “The Grapes of Wrath,” has created a state of “Steinbeck fever,” as Colleen Bailey, who runs the National Steinbeck Center, in Salinas, put it. After the show, the visitors were going to enjoy Steinbeck fever with the cast, in the form of a conversation.
Sitting next to Bailey was Susan Shillinglaw, one of the world’s foremost Steinbeck scholars, who wrote the introduction to the Penguin edition of “Of Mice and Men.” Shillinglaw, who has dark bangs, resembles a very contemplative Marlo Thomas. Before the play, she had visited the author’s house in Sag Harbor, where she’d discovered a door jamb marked with his children’s heights, as well as those of a few others.
“At the very top is Beowulf and Grendel,” Shillinglaw said. “Toulouse-Lautrec is in the middle—he was short—and, beneath that, Charley and Angel, Steinbeck’s dogs. At the very bottom is ‘Mischief plus magic plus mice.’ ”
The mice of Sag Harbor fare better than others in the Steinbeck canon. In “Of Mice and Men,” Lennie loves to pet soft creatures, which start out alive but don’t stay that way. Bailey said that the Steinbeck Center’s “Of Mice and Men” gallery features a bunkhouse with a bunk bed, playing cards, a flask, and men’s coats. “You can put your hand in one of the coat pockets and find a little mouse,” she said.
“Steinbeck emphasizes hands,” Shillinglaw said. “George’s hands, playing solitaire. Curley, with the Vaseline glove. Cookie, who’s maimed. Lennie’s hands are big and powerful.”
“In some productions, the actors have clearly never worked with their hands,” Bailey said. “I think of George’s hands as being muscular.”
“I think of them as being delicate—he’s figuring, working things out,” Shillinglaw said.
“Because we come from Salinas, I’m used to seeing agricultural workers,” Bailey said. “We’re the largest green-leafy-vegetable producers in the world.”
“Salinas is the salad bowl of the nation,” Shillinglaw said.
The house lights went down. George (James Franco) and Lennie (Chris O’Dowd) set up camp by a stream and ate beans from cans in a bindle. “Guys like us that work on ranches is the loneliest guys in the world,” Franco said. “But not us.”
“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you,” O’Dowd said. He moved his hands in a repetitive, nervous fashion, making a gesture somewhere between an A-O.K. and holding a teacup. After the duo went to work as grain buckers, met Curley (Alex Morf) and his “tart” wife (Leighton Meester, of “Gossip Girl” fame), and got into trouble, the play ended with a similarly tender “guys like us” scene, punctuated by a gunshot.
The house cleared, except for the Steinbeck experts. The ten cast members, in street clothes, returned and sat onstage. Meester wore plaid; Morf wore two plaids. Joel Marsh Garland, who plays a ranch hand, wore a gray hoodie that said “U.S. D.O.J.” on it: swag from “Orange Is the New Black,” on which he plays a prison guard.
Elizabeth Weldon-Smith, of the Steinbeck Center, introduced herself and Bailey to the actors. “We’re both from Salinas,” she said.
“Are you tarts?” O’Dowd called out. His accent was Irish; his shirt was floral. “I like when somebody from California is in the audience. The Salinas line always gets a laugh.”
Meester said, “I ain’t meant to live like this—I’m from Salinas!”
“That’s the big-deal town,” Bailey said.
Franco sat on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling off the end. He wore a trucker hat, cords, a T-shirt, and Adidas sneakers with green laces.
P.J. Palmer, a filmmaker, said to Franco, “I noticed that you love Ed Ricketts—Doc Ricketts from ‘Cannery Row.’ We started doing a documentary about him.”
“Oh, really?” Franco said. “I went to his house one time. They were having a party in there. I walked in and they kicked me out.”
“He was naked,” O’Dowd said.
“I was naked,” Franco said.
Bailey said, “I’m curious to know how younger people are responding to the show. Middle-school students are coming because they know you from your other work.”
O’Dowd said, “Because it’s on the syllabus in so many places, you’ve got all those lazy kids who turn up so they don’t have to read the book.”
Bailey said, “We get those too!”
Shillinglaw said, “You guys did a great job with the chemistry. Your anger was so palpable. Steinbeck said, ‘I’m tired of non-angry people, because they don’t do anything.’ There’s so much emotion in it, and for somebody to say there wasn’t—how did that feel?” Shillinglaw asked. “Steinbeck hated reviewers.”
James McMenamin, an actor, said, “James Franco loves them.”
Franco looked down. For a moment, he resembled his “Freaks and Geeks” incarnation, Daniel Desario, a well-meaning scuzzball who hangs out in the stairwell of his high school. “I don’t mind reviewers, I just—” he said. He muttered something. “It just seems like—and you guys correct me if I’m wrong—that of almost all the things that Steinbeck wrote, somehow this relationship is wound tighter than anything. There’s tragedy in ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ in the close relationship between Tom and Ma Joad, but Ma and the family are going to continue fighting when Tom goes off. But here it feels like now that Lennie’s dead, George is dead, too.” He grew emphatic. “I can’t think of any other relationship that’s wound that tightly in all of Steinbeck. There is tons of emotion there. It’s structured like a Greek tragedy. And you hook into these guys.”
Palmer said, “The story is so much about the American dream. Everybody wants it, and they can’t have it.”
O’Dowd said, “Steinbeck is quite big in Ireland. A lot of us chase the American Dream, and have done for a hundred and fifty years.”
McMenamin said, “It resonates when Candy says, ‘I worked weeks all my life, and I can’t remember none of them weeks.’ ” The cast murmured.
“Sometimes it gets applause,” Franco said.
Jim Ortleib, an actor, said, “Sometimes older guys hang their heads, like, Oh.”
Garland said, “I look out and see seventy-year-old men who are openly weeping.”
Franco, squinting, leaned back, in the position of an odalisque.
“Steinbeck thought that theatre was the way to get the largest audience,” Shillinglaw said. “Ordinary people went to the theatre, and the literate public would read the book.”
O’Dowd stood up. “I’m sorry, folks, I have to go,” he said.
“I loved your hands,” Shillinglaw said.
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Photograph by Richard Phibbs.
