John Steinbeck?s novels about the Great Depression have provided Hollywood with a number of American film classics, most famously ?The Grapes of Wrath? (1939).

Aware of his talent for dramatisation long before Hollywood discovered it, Steinbeck, wrote ?Of Mice and Men? (1937) first as a novella and then as a play, thereby inviting its performance on the stage.

The central characters are two drifters, farmhands looking for work. The compact, mentally alert George Milton and his giant, bone-crushingly strong but simple-minded friend, Lennie Small, plan to earn enough to invest in a modest homestead.

Their vision of living off ?the fat of the land? is not merely ironic, it is tragic, and sets a scenario of frustration.

The play?s title comes from Robert Burns? poem ?To a Mouse?:

??The best laid schemes o? mice an? men / gang aft agley / an? leave us nought but grief an? pain / for promised joy?.?

In Steinbeck?s play the ?promised joy? of the American Dream, where the dreamer?s reach forever exceeds his grasp, hovers like a miasmal cloud over the characters as their actions initiate the inexorable unravelling of the skein of the tragedy, as in Greek drama.

The BMDS production used a set admirably reduced to a minimum: three large clumps of dried grass (obtrusive, unfortunately, cumbersomely mounted on noisy wheels), an empty door frame, a couple of window flats and a few wooden crates to suggest bunkhouse and barn.

The play concentrated on a faithful retelling of the story. The use of lighting and sound was, unfortunately, too minimal to create a Depression mis-en-scene.

This wasn?t helped by the fresh-looking farmhouse wear of the fresh-faced farmhands and their boss (his gruffness is almost benign: his bullying, undersized son stalks about in sparkling cowboy gear); and the risky device of letting actors mime hand props highlighted skills that needed more expertise.

Leisurely scene changes by whistling, finger-clicking ?farmhands? and cast members gave an unintentional hint of musicals like ?Oklahoma !? (Steinbeck?s play actually has been adapted as a musical opera.)

?The home dream is? one of the deepest American illusions,? Steinbeck wrote in ?America and Americans? in 1966.

This points to the classical ?tragic flaw? in the characters, but there are other harbingers of tragedy in the play that needed to be made visible in the playing.

The pairing of George and Lennie means dependence for Lennie, and intolerable moral responsibility for George.

Theirs is a democracy of opposites, doomed to failure. Phillip Jones?s George was played somewhat too casually, with a hands-off, relaxed ease that indicated lack of involvement rather than confidence ? an inadequate foil for Lennie?s abject physical and moral dependence.

John Zuill?s Lennie was a physically and emotionally engaged performance of some power, but often lacked the opportunity to move beyond the role of mental retard. He was too often made to stand stock-still, great fingers splayed, a Frankenstein?s monster awaiting instructions.

The result was a predictably (instead of an inevitably) violent ending of their relationship.

The power of Steinbeck?s final scene ? a private moment of violent heartbreak for George and merciful release for Lennie ? was reduced in wattage to a public execution of ?justice?.

Crooks is the lone black character whose articulacy and intellect are of no account, since his colour disqualifies him from the ?home dream?.

Segregated in the stable, away from the men?s bunk house, he is a reminder of slavery and racism in America, and his response to the undeserved threat of a lynching is immediate and abject.

His back injury is severe enough to bend him over like a question mark, but there are no questions raised by his role.

He is merely a resident ?nigger? who, like Candy, comes with the territory.

But Crooks remains a nagging question mark. ?Any attempt to describe the America of today must take into account the issue of racial equality,? Steinbeck write in ?America and Americans?.

The other male characters: Candy, Slim, Whit, Carlson, Curley and the nameless Boss move competently in their appropriate roles but without any individual nuances that might have made them memorable.

Curley?s wife, also nameless, but the pivot on which the tragedy turns, is played as a stereotypical, brassy blonde, frustrated in love and dreaming of public admiration of her Hollywood looks.

Her death at Lennie?s powerful, unthinking hands, merely underlines her ordinariness, not her private frustration ? she is another dead mouse.

Questions circle around the core of the play such as the unlikely partnership between George and Lennie.

The actors too frequently looked out into the audience during the intimate scenes (the recounting of their common dream, done in a spotlight, was one such moment); but though good for audience sight lines, this further lessened opportunities for eye contact between them, essential for detailed characterisation.

Their ?buddy? relationship leaves no deeper questions in the mind of the audience.

The play invites many social and ethical questions about character. (In one recent production Lennie is an African American and Crooks a Chinese, adding still more questions.)

In this intimate, American ?Man?s play? characters cannot risk being one-dimensional; and issues of masculinity, integrity, moral responsibility, strength and weakness cannot be addressed by trite questions (implied by Curley?s wife) as to whether one is a ?man or a mouse?.

The larger, social theme is the men?s frustrated longing for a meaningful life and a place to call home. But their helplessness does not rule out their culpability. Another line from Burns, who was himself a small farmer, is instructive:

?I?m truly sorry man?s dominion / has broken Nature?s social union.?

The Great Depression was partly the result of farmers? ignorance and greed.

It was unchecked wheat-growing for large profits ? in a word, industrialism (?Man?s dominion?) ? that despoiled the Southern plains and created the Dust Bowl.

No interpretation of a play can ever be ?definitive?, but this production missed the opportunity to take on board the deliberately experimental, critical nature of Steinbeck?s vision of America and Americans.

?I am taking the American apart like a watch to see what makes him tick and some very curious things are emerging,? Steinbeck noted in ?A Life in Letters?, 1975.

What emerges in the BMDS production is entertaining theatre, the essential ingredient of all drama productions.

What does not emerge is the exploring and questioning of conventional assumptions ? a challenge which Steinbeck?s play invites.