I’ve never been to America, by which I mean the USA, but, perhaps like many of us, I feel that I have a greater sense of that country from literature, film, television and media, than some foreign countries that I have visited. Whether that is a true sense is hard to say but what I can say is that despite not always being terribly enamoured of some of the USA’s political and global activities, I am almost endlessly fascinated by great American literature.
Many of my favourite books and plays are deeply rooted in the American psyche; from classics such as ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, ‘Death of a Salesman’, ‘To Kill and Mockingbird’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’ which I am directing for the Crescent; to more modern work such as the novels of Toni Morrison and John Irving. I think you can trace thematic threads through all these works and many more. I will post more about these themes as my rehearsal process develops and deepens but here are a few starting points:
1. It’s a BIG country. I can’t imagine how big it is or what it feels like to travel for days across swathes of fields or desert without ever coming to an ocean. Is all that space liberating or oppressive in its own way? Many characters, such as Biff in Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’, and Lenny and George in ‘Of Mice and Men’, dream of owning their own little patch of all that space and living free off the ‘fat o’ the lan”. The possibilities seem endless and perhaps therein lies the problem; with all that choice and apparent freedom where is the urgency to commit and settle? It’s also a pretty lonely place for most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’.
2. Technology and progress; moving forward. From motor cars to farm machinery, engines and machines are everywhere in American literature yet they often cause more harm than good. Candy in ‘Of Mice and Men’ has been disabled by a machine and motor vehicle accidents wreak havoc on the lives of John Irving’s characters in ‘The World According to Garp’ and ‘A Widow for One Year’.
3. ‘All men are born free but some are born more free than others’. Racial inequality and the legacy of slavery haunt many American classics. Crooks, the black stable buck, is marginalised on the ranch in ‘Of Mice and Men’ and is consequently embittered and disempowered – I will talk more about how I intend to explore this in my production another time. Racial prejudice leading to injustice is foregrounded in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and I draw a direct parallel between the actions of Sethe in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’, who kills her own daughter rather than have her taken back into slavery, and the actions of George at the end of ‘Of Mice and Men’. Lenny is not black but he is certainly ‘different’.
4. The American Dream. Hopeless or dashed dreams drive many of the great characters of American literature. Many of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ have dreams; from Curley’s Wife who dreams of movie stardom – the apex of celebrity-obssessed American society even in the 1930s, to George and Lenny’s more modest but equally impossible dream of their own little farm.
As Langston Hughes wrote in his poem ‘A Dream Deferred’;
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
(Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967)
I think you can find the fate of most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ in that poem and each has its own particular tragedy.
Liz Plumpton
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