Rich Baker, Lester Keefe, Greg Hardigan, John Harrell and Brian McCartney in Shattered Globe’s Of Mice and Men at Victory Gardens.

Steinbeck's best known novel has never thrilled me on stage. Though I've not read the book, I've seen a couple of productions of the stage adaptation and have always been left feeling as though something was missing, but it wasn't until Shattered Globe's attempt that this something came clear.

The themes of usefulness and survival thread through Steinbeck's story of two drifters during the Great Depression. George's existence is constantly complicated and even imperiled by his developmentally challenged brother, Lennie, who may be strong as an ox, but is about as bright and socially challenged as a five-year-old. After taking a job on a ranch in California, the two brothers see their dream of owning their own farm come close to realization before being lost.

Overall, Steinbeck's story works well on stage. Strong, distinct characters drive the action. Everything happens in one or two locations. All can be revealed through dialogue. But somehow, in Shattered Globe's sturdy interpretation, this doesn't translate to a strong investment from the audience. I suspect this is largely due to the script's lack of humor. George is a serious guy, as are the folks he meets at the ranch. A lot of serious discussion takes place, touching on some serious issues. Only Lennie has a bit of a comic through-line, but it's an uncomfortable sort of humor in this era of political correctness. Unfortunately, all this seriousness leaves the audience without a good way to connect to those characters, so that when the climax arrives, instead of gut-wrenching, it's just kind of sad.

Most of these problems don't stem directly from first time director Eileen Niccolai's production, but are endemic to the script. Perhaps a truly top-notch production could overcome some of the problems here, but Shattered Globe's efforts don't reach that height. John Harrell as Lennie does some of the best work, finding a true dramatic journey and transcending the trap of exclusively playing Lennie's condition. He also has a nice rapport with Brian Pudil's George, although Pudil doesn't always succeed in scaling the character's emotional heights. In fact, most of the cast have the same problem: their characters are persuasive and nicely detailed, but when the time comes for the big emotional payoff, they fall short.

If this play had to stand on its own merits, rather than existing as a reflection of a beloved novel, it would probably not receive the kind of attention it does from American theatres. Shattered Globe, though they make a valiant effort, doesn't completely succeed in transcending its limitations. As a result, this Of Mice and Men will probably be most interesting to fans of the book.

Of Mice and Men—Shattered Globe

Chris Jones, Tribune—"Pudil is the centerpiece of a very solid and exceptionally intimate Of Mice and Men from the neophyte director—and longtime Chicago actress—Eileen Niccolai. In terms of innovation, pacing and staging, the show is a notch below Shattered Globe in its glory days in the late 1990s. But this is a play that rewards the viewer regardless of one's familiarity with the text. And this is a generally right-headed production that's replete with the necessary integrity and sufficiently engrossing so that any youngsters studying the book in school now would get a very thorough and arresting experience in the diminutive Victory Gardens studio."

Kevin Nance, Sun-Times—"If the production relies disproportionately on Harrell, he is, happily, in virtually every scene. The theater gods be praised. His performance is that rare thing: an actor summoning every ounce of his talent and laying it down in the service of a character. It's a kind of sacrifice—the opposite of showy or narcissistic; we don't think of him as acting, or indeed as an actor. He's just Lennie, and we know that if something happens to him, our hearts are going to break wide open."

Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—"Making her directorial debut, long-time Shattered Globe ensemble member Eileen Niccolai leads a crack team of great actors and clever designers to illuminate Steinbeck's own stage adaptation of his novella. Everything resonates with immediacy and honesty in the close confines of the upstairs Victory Gardens Theater studio space. Such proximity to the actors allows you admire their skills at fleshing out Steinbeck's doomed dreamers. Brian Pudil is a grounded and low-key George, the protector to John Harrell's clumsy giant Lennie. Harrell thankfully doesn't overdo Lennie's 'retarded talk' and almost never betrays his character's child-like condition."

Curse of the Crying Heart—House Theatre of Chicago

Chris Jones, Tribune—"Nathan Allen and the House Theatre are back on their mutually dependent track. When either steps away from the other, things never are quite the same. So, it seemed, at least from Allen's last outside directing project, a disappointing dalliance. And House also has tended to misfire when Allen isn't on its stage. But stick this fellow amid his endlessly inventive young cohorts, especially when Dennis Watkins is directing the action, and Allen can front a piece of live fantasy entertainment with the confidence and sophistication and sheer pizzazz of a Hollywood star."

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"Written by Nathan Allen (who also stars as Sorrow, the Masked Samurai, and doubles as the self-serenading lead singer and composer for the onstage Trick Hearts Band), Curse has been directed with impressive formal elegance and extreme flamboyance by Dennis Watkins. There are lovely dance sequences by Tommy Rapley, and there is eye-popping, stand-and-cheer fight choreography by Matthew Hawkins, who also winningly plays Kobushi, one of the show's several soft-hearted warriors."

Justin Hayford, Reader—"[D]espite imaginative writing, an inventive staging, and savvy performances, this show will probably be inaccessible to all but those already infatuated with anime-esque melodrama. Director Dennis Watkins launches the cast into Allen's convoluted saga of warlord attacks, mystic prophesy, and unrequited love without first establishing a theatrical language that might unite these disparate strands, and by keeping the script's deadly serious and glibly ironic elements separate he prevents a coherent point of view from developing. The show's ambitious scope and technical craftsmanship make for impressive spectacle. Now it needs substance."

The Glass Menagerie—The Hypocrites

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"In the disarming new Hypocrites production of Menagerie, director Sean Graney does what any director must do. He treats Williams' play like a new play, not a classic, and the itchy, often unexpected details that emerge in his fiercely acted production do indeed make things live and breathe in the present…Wisely, Graney opted for a more selectively stylized production. That is, with one enormous and unfortunate exception. Sound designer Joseph Fosco and composer Kevin O'Donnell smother every moment in background music. This isn't sound design, it's a sound attack. Yet the production, which is often fascinating and never stodgy, survives this misjudgment before sending the audience out in a happily unsettled state."

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"You may very well find yourself hypnotized anew by the poetry and tragicomedy of this career-making, semi-autobiographical memory play — a work that debuted in Chicago in 1944 and marked the start of a remarkable theatrical journey. You also may find director Sean Graney's approach to the work to be a fascinating blend of the starkly realistic and the dreamily illusory. His production takes a crisp, strong approach to the play's quotidian storytelling with its series of gorgeous scenes that can bite sharply or shimmer with the greatest delicacy as needed. Yet at the same time it continually reminds you of the emotional veil of time past that Williams has drawn over many of the play's most emblematic encounters."

Jack Helbig, Reader—"Director Sean Graney's relentlessly unsentimental take on the desperate Wingfield household utilizes many of the playwright's original nonrealistic touches, notably the use of projected words and pictures, excised from the first production on Broadway. These accents—coupled with jagged expressionistic lighting and the slightly heightened emotional tone of the acting in this Hypocrites production—make it crystal clear that this is no nostalgic look at prewar Saint Louis. Rather it's a cruel but affecting portrait of three lost souls, bound together as only a hopelessly unhappy family can be."

Jennifer Vanasco, Free Press—"[D]irector Sean Graney has transformed these well-worn words into a play you've never seen before, a play that is at once both startlingly real and tenderly ethereal… The one directorial mistake is that Graney goes back to Williams' original text, which called for projected images and text. These, along with the annoying, continuous music, keep trying to pull us out of the play. Luckily, the actors continually draw us back in."

Inventing Van Gogh—Bailiwick Repertory

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"Despite some clever late 19th and early 21st century art world synergisms, the play seems unfocused and unsure of what it wants to be or say. And the acting here runs the gamut from solid to dreadful. The true star of this show is designer Brian Sidney Bembridge's set (beautifully lit by Jared Moore), which evokes a warehouse atelier in deep perspective. A kind of dream studio for any bohemian artist worth his or her dirty fingernails, it features six huge, mullioned windows that suggest an industrial version of stained glass and that catch both the blue-purple-red light and entrenched grime of a painter's world far more succinctly than the script."

Kerry Reid, Reader—"Steven Dietz's 2001 play, directed with a heavy hand by James Pelton, substitutes aphorism for dialogue and archetypes for characters in a pointless exploration of the painter's life and work…the two-act play devolves into a pseudo-intellectual exercise where actors fire off strained metaphors about Art and Passion and Color and Light at high volumes. The mentor maintains that Van Gogh's work is about 'the conjuring of absences'—and the play itself is running on empty despite Brian Sidney Bembridge's eye-catching set. You'd be better off renting Lust for Life."

Quote of the Fortnight:

"Don't even think about going unless you know the movies in some detail. Not even for a date. Not worth it. Your relationship would never recover."—Chris Jones reviewing The One-Man Lord of the Rings currently appearing at the Apollo Theatre in the Tribune.