Our theatre reviewer, Sam Sims, shares his thoughts on Of Mice and Men at Hull Truck Theatre.
I didn’t study Of Mice and Men at school, nor have I gotten around to reading it in the decades since. When I saw that Hull Truck Theatre were doing a production of the 1937 novel, I told myself that this was it, I’d finally grab myself a copy from the library and see what all the fuss was about. But alas, that unfortunately didn’t happen because I got stuck into Barbra Streisand’s epic biography instead.
Written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and follows two migrant ranch workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, as they navigate the harsh realities of life in California. George is the reluctant caretaker of Lennie, who has learning disabilities and who possesses immense physical strength but struggles to understand the complexities of the world.
In this co-production with Derby Theatre, Octagon Theatre Bolton and Theatre by The Lake, Jess Curtis’s set is simple but it does its job effectively and in a way that immediately immerses the audience in the story. It’s plain and very brown – almost overwhelmingly so and when our two protagonists, George and Lennie (Liam King and William Young), tired and frustrated, finally lie down for the night, we understand how drained they must be. But as the story progresses, and the set opens up, its simplicity becomes far more impressive. There’s a visually striking yellow/green wall that I especially love – it adds real dimension to the set. There’s some great costumes here too, also the handiwork of Curtis. They’re, again, simple, but send you easily hurtling back to the 1930s.
You may have seen the recent controversy surrounding Of Mice and Men and calls for the book to be taken off the GCSE curriculum, with some demands, like those in Wales, being successful. Many students feel uncomfortable with the heavy discriminatory language, most notably black students, and it does make one wonder why, in 2025 – almost one hundred years after the book was published, we’re seeing it on stage. This is a more complex issue than a review has any right to discuss, but it has to be noted that Hull Truck and its partner theatres have taken great care to acknowledge this and to offer up their reasoning for staging Of Mice and Men now.
On a more superficial, but still valuable level, lengthy advisory content warnings are available to view, prior to seeing the show. Something I personally really struggled with watching this, was the portrayal of Lennie. I feel like we’ve come a long, long way in how we view people with disabilities and though we’ve got a million miles left to go, disabled characters on stage, screen etc do have more agency than they’ve ever had before. Though Lennie is still, in my opinion, very much a trope and not a fully-fleshed out character, the fact we have actors with real lived experience of being disabled playing him on alternative performances is pretty damn great. Same with Ben Wilson’s Candy, a character who is blind, being played by an actor who is blind. Whatever next!
Of Mice and Men is definitely worth seeing. Is the story still relevant? You decide that for yourselves. But this is a considerate, worthwhile production that is, dare I say it, quietly radical.
[Sam Sims – Theatre reviewer]
Of Mice and Men runs at Hull Truck Theatre until Saturday 22nd March.
