Broadway's new 'Of Mice and Men' starry and stinging

NEW YORK — It's hard to think of a character in American fiction more heartbreaking than Lennie, the gentle, doomed giant in Of Mice and Men. Even if you've never read John Steinbeck's 1937 novella, or seen the play he adapted from it, you'll sense early on that this guileless creature who loves soft animals — and can crush them easily, without meaning to — is destined for tragedy.

In the new Broadway production of Mice (* * * ½ out of four stars), which opened Wednesday at the Longacre Theatre, Lennie is played by Irish actor Chris O'Dowd, known for rather lighter fare such as the films Bridesmaids and Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. You wouldn't necessarily recognize him here; his wavy locks shorn to a buzz cut, O'Dowd stoops, suggesting a man either hiding or apologizing for his physical height and might. When Lennie is excited or curious, the fingers on his left hand curl, as if grasping for information he cannot comprehend; when he's afraid, or ashamed, he flinches, like a child being scolded.

It's a vivid, sensitive performance of the piece with director Anna D. Shapiro's staging. Having deftly served the rapid-fire, often caustic wit in August: Osage County and The Motherf----- with the Hat, Shapiro approaches the very different milieu here determined to articulate the more simply expressed but still piercing longings and regrets of Steinbeck's men (and one woman).

She's aided by an excellent cast, which includes two other familiar faces new to the Main Stem. James Franco plays George, the wandering laborer who is Lennie's constant, if often frustrated, companion and protector. Having secured new jobs for them as ranch workers after Lennie innocently bungled their last arrangement, George is weary of his friend's demands but emotionally bound to him.

"You get used to goin' around with a guy," George tells the good-hearted Slim (a graceful, robust Jim Parrack). Franco infuses the typically, deceptively straightforward line with a wry, rueful edge that reflects George's own feelings of loneliness and inadequacy.

George and Lennie's hopes to make a fresh start are immediately threatened by the ranch owner's pugnacious son and the son's restless bride, referred to simply as Curley's Wife and played by Gossip Girl graduate Leighton Meester. Though the men identify her as trouble — and Steinbeck, on the page, gives them little argument — the actress and her director are keen that we see her own neediness, and Meester brings flickers of softness and even warmth to the role.

Stage vets Jim Norton and Ron Cephas Jones are predictably superb as two longtime ranch hands, Candy and Crooks. Though physically disabled and further burdened by, respectively, old age and racial discrimination, both are moved by George and Lennie's dreams toward glimmers of hope.

It's a credit to Shapiro and her company that, in this revival of Mice, hope comes through as powerfully as its ultimate futility.