When the news hit that there would be a Broadway revival of “Of Mice and Men” this spring, the buzz centered around the New York debut of its star, James Franco. But what made this production so promising to many insiders was that Anna D.Shapiro would be directing the 1937 John Steinbeck play which the writer himself adapted from his novella published earlier that year. The Yale graduate cut her teeth in Chicago theater, most notably with the Steppenwolf Theatre where she developed Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County,” the corrosive family drama that would win her the Tony Award when it transferred to Broadway.
Bloodlines do not connect the two migrant ranch hands in “Of Mice and Men”: the flinty dreamer George Milton, played by Franco, and Lennie Small, the gentle giant with a limited mental capacity, played by Chris O’Dowd. But that makes the play even more haunting and tragic, said Shapiro. “It’s essentially a choice,” said the director of George’s alliance with Lennie as they are buffeted by the harsh winds of rural California during the Depression. The fact that George at one point tries to slough off his relationship with Lennie as not bound by blood is a fallacy, said Shapiro. He’s even more tied to him because the two have chosen a partnership not only to dispel loneliness but also to share the dream of having their own farm one day — a goal that proves heartbreakingly elusive.
Shapiro recently spoke with ARTINFO about the particular challenges and burdens of American manhood that the play explores and which are as timely today as they were when it was first written.
How did the production come about?
It was a project that I’ve wanted to do forever and some years ago it was in the process of being developed and James was the first person I thought of to play George. But he got very busy, which is not surprising, James being James, and the production fell apart. I was heartbroken. So it was a stroke of luck when it came back around and James was already attached to it.
What made you think of Franco for George?
George is a complicated character and James had always read complicated to me, even when he’s doing stoner comedies. The question is always, “Who is he? What does he really want?” And that’s a great quality. I also suspected that the guy was super smart, and getting to know him and working with him and becoming friends with him, he is super smart. And there’s nothing more fun than working with actors who are super smart.
Why did you cast Chris O’Dowd [the Irish actor who broke through in “Bridesmaids”] as Lennie?
I thought Lennie needed to be someone who is at his core strangely charming, which is different from childlike. It’s different from damaged, where there is this inevitability of, “Well this guy is a big scary guy. Of course bad things happen to this guy.” Chris has been a big guy since sixth grade, and when he and I talked, one of the things he said to me was, “I’ve been hurting people accidentally my whole life.” And I thought, “Fan-fucking-tastic!”
These characters were created in the depth of the Depression. How does that translate in 2014 America?
The one thing that never changes in America is that the white straight male is born with a promise. Women are not promised very much and we embody our disappointment from the beginning. But what do you do when the world has made you a promise and you believe as you come into middle age that it is just not coming to fruition, as many of the men in my world do, even the unbelievably successful ones? There is just not enough to give the dream to everyone and I do think that becomes more acute at different times historically. People have lost their jobs, more people are encountering a kind of difficulty because they thought they were going to have a different kind of life than they’re having. I think what’s constant is the collision between what success means to a straight white American male and what he’s given. That was true then and it’s true now.
During the Depression, men thought it was their fault that they were failures. Is there the same shame and guilt today or are the feelings born out of a feeling of frustrated entitlement?
That’s a really important and fascinating idea. To be reductive to make a point, if we’re talking about the spine of American realism in theater-making, then we’re talking about the failure of the patriarchy. In the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams or Clifford Odets, the father has made a promise and has fucked up somehow, leaving the son to deal with the fallout. This play is a little different because there’s no structural familial unit. This is a world of extreme utility. The only thing that matters is your function. And if you aren’t functioning then you’re talking about being taken out back and shot in the head because you’re like a dog that can’t hunt. What can you accomplish and what do you not accomplish? So I do feel that straight American men, they get short shrift in this area. I think they feel guilt and shame a lot about what they don’t accomplish. It’s a terrible burden in my opinion and I’m fascinated by it.
Why does George choose to make a social contract with Lennie?
I have many feelings about this but I’m hesitant to answer because we’re just starting rehearsals and I feel in a way that James gets to find that out. James will figure out why he’s chosen this relationship, but I will say this: I think it will be as baffling to George why we love anyone as it is baffling to us.
Some critics have faulted the novella and play for being melodramatic. Is that one of the dangers?
Yeah, I think about this a lot. It’s a tragedy and tragedies are inevitable. I don’t think many people who are coming to see the play will not know essentially what happens. But plays are not about what happens. Plays are about understanding what happens, what it means. If we just leaned into the story, for lack of a better word, it would still be a powerful story but, like delight, it might disappear an hour after you saw it. You cried really hard and then it’s over, just like you laugh really hard and it’s over. The essential themes of the play really have nothing to do with what happens but how what happens echoes in our own lives, in our choices and in our own heartbreak and in our own wishes.
