You’d think John Steinbeck’s short masterpiece Of Mice and Men was challenge enough for young readers: a tale that in its pages manages to talk about the misery of farmworkers in the 1930s dustbowl, male bonding, outsiders, innocence, the cruelty of the American Dream and lots more, all within the framework of both Greek myth and capitalist exposee.
But Theatr Powys, ever ambitious, set out to do more – they appropriate the novel and make it also about living today for a young person in a place like Powys.
From mid-West to mid-Wales, then, as 16 year-old Ceri, mooching off school, stumbles into the fictional world of Steinbeck and discovers the story of George and Lenny.
And although designed mainly for teenage audiences, Something That Happened Just South of Solitude (a slight variation on Steinbeck’s own sub-title) is a clever and provocative take on Mice and Men that can also engage adult audiences, as evidenced when it was presented at The Baverstock near Aberdare as part of the Wales TIE Conference.
On one level it takes the novel (rather than the play which the writer adapted himself and which The Torch Theatre so successfully presented last year) and allows Steinbeck himself to talk, partly in his own words as the narrator but also as he is challenged by his young interrogator, while on another it allows us to ask whether the meaning of any writing lies in the intentions of the author or in how we, the audience, read the text.
She is there, following Steinbeck’s creation of his characters and situations as he taps away on his typewriter and relating it to her own experience – in fact she takes over the role of Curly’s wife, the lonely misunderstood woman in a man’s world, dreaming about a glamorous life while trapped somewhere south of Soledad.
Playwright Bob Wallbank also shows he sees the bigger picture – for example taking the story as a Greek tragedy by putting us in the same position as an Athenian audience by letting us know the ending. “Lenny dies, doesn’t he,” says Ceri at the outset. Willy Russell does the same sort of thing in Blood Brothers.
Ceri represents the reader and as such she questions and challenges the author and in a neat ending Steinbeck hands over the finished manuscript to her – as his finished story, presumably, but also in an act that relinquishes his control over the narrative.
But he does, it seems to me, also seem to suggest that Steinbeck was mostly concerned with social realism as time and time again he has the author justifying the plot to Ceri as “that’s the way it is” – while the power of the book lies in its many layers of meaning, not least Steinbeck’s indictment of a capitalism that not only created the dustbowl but encourages false hopes and creates inequality.
We shouldn’t forget that this production was conceived as part of a participatory full-day Theatre-in-Education programme that aims to explore the role of literature in the lives of young people today and any inconsistencies are there to challenge ideas of how we find meanings in narratives.
If we do feel the play itself is in some ways restricted in interpretation, we are in no way stinted in terms of performance. This is a fine piece of theatre directed by Ian Yeoman (who also plays Steinbeck) and excellently acted by Danie Croft, Chris Batten and Paul Fields and with a symbol-loaded set, all boots and boxes, by Jill Rolfe.
There are some striking moments, as when Ceri kicks off her bumpers and literally steps into Curly’s wife’s high heels, loosening her hair and changing from discontented teenager to sympathetic but unconsciously sexy young woman. Suddenly the play becomes about her rather than about all the men and the tragic fate of Lennie, the sacrificial victim. Pure theatrical magic.