Earnest empathy 2nd Story’s straightforward Of Mice and Men BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Of Mice and Men Adapted by John Steinbeck from his novel . Directed by Ed Shea. With Marvin Novogrodski, Aaron Morris, Bob Colonna, Joe Ouellette, Laura Sorensen, Walter Perez, Michael Zola, Vince Petronio, Anthony Pesare, and Timothy White. At 2nd Story Theatre through December 14.

It’s understandable that John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men doesn’t get staged much these days. It’s a cheap weeper, and this is an age that has too much to weep about for us to dispense tears frivolously.

Nonetheless, 2nd Story Theatre has come up with a simple, straightforward production that doesn’t pump up the pathos, just lays it out for our inspection. We get all the satisfactions of a tearjerker without the feeling that we’ve been jerked around. The acting doesn’t get in the way of our empathy.

This is the 1937 story of itinerant California ranch hand George (Aaron Morris) and the hapless friend he takes care of, Lenny (Marvin Novogrodski), then called retarded. In 1938 Steinbeck adapted for the stage his successful short novel of the year before. He was helped by playwright George S. Kaufman, now with his director hat on, who freed up the novelist to work on The Grapes of Wrath.

Unlike the book, which could provide colorful descriptions and insightful editorializing, the play can offer only what it can show. The 1992 movie with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise had a somewhat easier task than the play did, since the camera can guide and even rivet our attention.

It is the odd couple of George and Lenny whom we have to keep us interested, not the plot. We’re aware of each plot element bearing down on them like locomotives chuffing louder over the hill. Right away they are running away from trouble Lenny has gotten into at their last job. The big fella likes to pet soft things. We first see him stroking a dead mouse he found at the side of the road. Bunny rabbits are his favorite, though in a pinch he’ll even touch a pretty dress passing by. But he panics when confronted, and he doesn’t know his own strength and, well, you can imagine where that leads.

At the ranch where they start working, they have to stay out of the way of a trampy young bride (Laura Sorensen), bored and flirtatious, as well as her justifiably suspicious newlywed husband Curly (Joe Ouellette), the son of the kindly boss (Anthony Pesare). Steinbeck paints a complementary picture of loneliness in the form of the irascible black stablehand Crooks (Walter Perez).

Under the direction of Ed Shea, the production works because we buy the main relationship. Morris gives George a necessary wary intelligence, an alert concern for his responsibility that the character can’t completely relax from for a minute. George indulges in an occasional tirade at Lenny, detailing how he’d be better off without him. But more than duty has to be involved for us to care much, and Morris conveys affection unobtrusively as well. Novogrodski is the perfect Lenny. Not only is he big and stocky enough, unlike Malkovich, but he also conveys a warm likeableness, as anyone knows who has seen him in his autobiographical play Out of My Mind.

They get good support from the actors who portray the bunkhouse workmates with well-varied personalities: Michael Zola, Vince Petronio, and Timothy White. The most substantial contribution is by Bob Colonna as Candy, an old-timer kept around because an accident at the ranch took one of his hands. Candy wants to join George and Lenny in their dream of buying a little farm of their own — which he says everybody talks about but nobody ever makes happen — after one of the men keeps harping on shooting Candy’s smelly, toothless old dog.

All of this is staged in the round, to maximize the intimacy in the small theater space. Two raw plank runways, perhaps five feet wide, intersect like a dusty crossroads junction, providing four entrances and exits for a natural flow of activity. About the only prop is a revolver. The stripped-down set, with a big blow-up of the opening page of Steinbeck’s book on a far wall, is far more evocative than lots of authentic barn paraphernalia would be. We get an undistracting space in which to focus on what we’re seeing.

Also helping is Ron Cesario’s costume design — bib overalls that make Lenny look even more like a big child, button suspenders for George. Most helpful is Eric Behr finger-picking his guitar and singing Woody Guthrie standards to us, sometimes between scenes and now and then to softly enhance the mood like a movie soundtrack.

Steinbeck might have been a shameless sentimentalist, which takes the edge off the respect-the-poor-working-man effect he wanted. But the two actors at the center of this story command our attention and gain our respect for a defter sort of labor.