Hey, George, We Made It Back to Broadway | James Franco and Chris O’Dowd in ‘Of Mice and Men’
Ben BrantleyApril 16, 2014: See those two guys sitting up there on the stage — the big, slow feller and his smaller, quicker pal? Don’t you somehow get the feeling they’ve been crouched at that campfire forever? And that you’ve been watching them for just about as long? Such responses may bedevil you as you settle in for the respectable, respectful and generally inert revival of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which opened on Wednesday night at the Longacre Theater, with the film stars James Franco and Chris O’Dowd making their Broadway debuts. Even if you’ve never seen a previous production of this play — or the movies it inspired, or the 1937 novella they’re based on — you’re likely aware in some corner of your mind of the odd couple at its center, George (Mr. Franco), the feisty dreamer, and Lennie, the childlike Goliath. They’re as planted in our country’s collective imagination as Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Beavis and Butthead.
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