Performance Critique Paper - of Mice of Men

Performance Critique Paper- Of Mice of Men

I. The Script

A. Genre

In my opinion, dark comedy would be the best fit genre for the play Of

Mice of Men. Although it may have been intended to be a tragedy it was

comical in many scenes because of the characters, one in particular whose

name was Lenny. This character suffered from mental retardation and his

lack of understanding kept the audience very amused.

B. Conflict

The symptoms that Lenny has endured because of his accident as a young

child are the major conflict of this play. He does not have the mental

capacity to understand what is going on around him or when he has done

something wrong. This leads to him to do many things that people with a

normal brain capacity would not do.

In my opinion, the inciting incident was when they moved to the ranch

they were going to be working on. All of the problems that went on

through the duration of the play occurred after this.

The climax occurred when Lenny killed the wife of their boss's son. This

happened because Lenny was sitting in the barn with a dead puppy when

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the wife entered. He did not want anyone to know he had the dead puppy

because he promised he would leave them alone. She then continued to get

loud about the situation and he tried to get her to be quiet. I was unclear if

he had smothered her to death or if he perhaps broke her neck. Either way

this was a scene that was very action packed.

The rest of the guys that worked there, as well as the husband of the now

dead woman, were called into the barn and saw the body. They decided to

go after Lenny because he was the only one that was absent from the

group. Their intentions were to kill him. However, his friend George, who

he traveled with, told him if anything were to happen he should hide in a

certain spot and he would come find him. George directed the other guys

in other directions so he could have time to talk to Lenny. He then killed

Lenny himself, which was the resolution to all the problems he had

caused. I do not believe he did this because he was fully fed up with them,

yet because he promised his mother he would look after him and he felt he

was letting her down if he let the rest of the men kill him.

C. Theme

I think there are a few different themes in this play under various topics. I

think one theme comes from Lenny having the characteristic of loyalty.

Even though George continues to bring him down and ruin certain things

for him he still stays by his side. This also brings up a theme of friendship.

Both George and Lenny were good friends to each other, which made the

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loyalty even harder for Lenny to break. The last theme that I believe

occurs in this play is the passion both main characters have for a bigger

and better life. Their dreams are what make them thrive and tells the

audience that no matter what do not let anything hold you back and always

go for what you want.

II. The Designs

A. Set Design

The set designer used a proscenium stage to help hide the activities taking

place backstage. They also used flats to change the scenes. They kept the

structured pieces on the sides during some scenes and when they went into a

scene where they were at the bunkhouse they simply moved both of the

structures to the middle of the stage making two walls with their beds. They

also used drapery to show they beginning of the play, intermission and ending

of the play.

B. Light Design

Since there was not too much going on at one time I think the way the lighting

designer chose to use the light helped the play. They made sure that we saw

what was important. When there was something important going on they

focused the lighting on that specific character. However, during some parts I

saw myself looking at the back drop where they used lighting to make it look

like the sun was setting.

C. Costume Design