John Steinbeck wrote his own stage adaptation only months after the book was published in 1937. “The bulk of the dialogue is lifted straight from the novel, and because the book is so short the plot doesn’t have to be condensed to become a two-hour play,” explains Jonathan Church, director of the new production.

Set during the Great Depression, in the Californian farmland where Steinbeck grew up, Of Mice and Men is a tragic exploration of the American Dream. George and Lennie are itinerant farmhands pitching up at a new ranch, hoping to scrape together enough dollars to buy themselves “a little house and a couple of acres”. Church suggests: “In this desperately hard world, Lennie and George bring hope, and that’s a dangerous thing. We use the scale of the stage to show the scale of the landscape, and the huge sky. There’s something really powerful in having a couple of bodies in a really big space.”

The action takes place in four locations, including the barn where mentally disabled Lennie obsessively plays with a puppy, and finally kills a woman.

In Steinbeck’s notes for the play, he suggests a non-naturalistic approach, but Church decided to opt for having a live animal on stage for the pivotal moment, when one farmhand shoots a smelly old dog which has outlived its usefulness. Without families, without homes, and hobbled by hard labour, the dirt-poor drifting men in the bunkhouse know their futures are no brighter.

To research the production, Church looked at agricultural machinery from the Thirties. “I wanted to understand the physical reality of the work, the poverty of the living conditions, and the status of the different roles on the farm,” he explains. The dialogue is taut and sinewy, written in the vernacular of swampers, barley-buckers and jerkline skinners.

“My favourite line is when Lennie kills the puppy, and says, ‘I didn’t bounce you hard’,” says Church. “That’s so childlike, so innocent. You know Lennie didn’t mean to do it, and you feel sympathy for him, but at the same time you realise he can do dreadful things.”

JUDITH PALMER

Until November 24. Box Office: 0121 236 4455 for tickets and information on 50-minute presentations for schools, drama workshops and platform events. Two film adaptations have been made : a 1939 version starring Lon Chaney and a 1992 version with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich (available on video)