NT Live: More Mouse Than Man?

American theatre director, Tony award winner and nominee, Anna D. Shapiro’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s well-trodden classroom favourite Of Mice and Men was elected as the first ever Broadway production to air to cinemas via NT: Live. For such a weighty testament to popularity, one and a half years later we receive a production that is at best: pretty and a safe bet or, perhaps more realistically, disappointing bar its star attractions – James Franco and Chris O’Dowd.

The production as a whole seems to suffer from the sort of clammy commercial happy-pap that Americans seem all too fond of. There are good points; O’Dowd who sports a shaved head and impressive beard attains a physicality that expands beyond his actual build to the proportion of Steinbeck’s big friendly giant. His mannerisms too, and his stumbling childlike speech-patterns, are a triumph that posit O’Dowd as a capable “straight actor” (as I attested to after a great turn in Calvary) and perhaps even a brilliant one. Franco also is good as the insular and on-edge guardian-friend and the chemistry between the two is visible in the still fresh tears on their faces as they bow. The question that must be begged of the rest of the production however, is whether it was worth creating?

I mean this not to insult a competent production yet, with a novel that deals largely in tension and attrition while not ever doing much, it’s hard to keep audiences interested for albeit a rather short run time (which for some reason misses out macabre gravity of the post-shooting – that George goes back to his old ways which is, you know, kind of the whole point of the book). Furthermore, the interval interviews added nothing except that Shapiro, as a mother, understands the relationship between the protagonists (because apparently only mother’s know what love is) and that Franco had evidently read the Sparknotes page. Thus, Shapiro seems left with no choice but to capitalise on the “set-pieces” of the book: the fight, the death and the shooting, which end up being transposed somewhat amateurishly.

Whilst it was refreshing for once (after the epic filmic punch-ups we’re bombarded with where the hero doesn’t even scratch his knuckles) to see some well-crafted gore as Lenny crushes Curley’s hand, which was coupled with a thunderous and frightening split-second evolution by O’Dowd – the fight itself was messy. Again, for some inconceivable reason (although this may well have been only more noticeable due to the zoom of the camera), someone in the props department straight up ran out of fucks and had O’Dowd nurse a toy dog complete with sewn on button eyes and the inevitable shot rang through the auditorium with all the gravitas of a wet fart as Lenny falls bloodless to his end.

To end, Broadway attempted nothing new and fell somewhat short of the mark even with that. The main attractions, as they well should have been, were good to excellent at times. The set, however, was as always seems to be the case nowadays with technological advances – a saving grace, from barren but beautiful moonlit landscapes to the crowded bunkhouse interior being competently evocative of the source material. Lastly, the live Broadway audience clapped after every scene like a cheap musical because someone from the telly was in front of them, which subsequently pissed me right off (none of that in the London production of Hamlet with old Benny C, just saying.)