Producing artistic director Edward Stern has sensed and then realized something thematically and emotionally monumental in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."

"Of Mice and Men," which opened the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's 47th season Thursday night, appropriately can be played quite intimately. Steinbeck's drama looks at the interdependency of two drifters during the Great Depression scraping out a living in the Salinas Valley as ranch hands.

What a contrast George (Marc Aden Gray) and Lennie (Brendan Averett) are. George is small, wiry and quick-witted. His impatience with Lennie's mental slowness explodes into displays of temper and frustration.

But this giant loves to touch soft things ... mice, puppies and a woman like the rancher Curly's wife. Lennie's compulsion for things soft leads to violence.

Steinbeck, who also worked as a farmhand early on, adapted this play from his 1937 novel. It can appropriately be played on ground level. "Mice" is a metaphor for the societal issues of the Depression (drifting men rich in dreams made impossible by their poverty and exploitation).

But Stern has looked beyond this still cogent story to provide a theatrical experience displaying how much impoverishment the human condition often contains.

His artistic magnification starts with the production. Upon entering the theater, the viewer cannot help but be struck by Paul Shortt's imposing set.

The aridity of the barren California brush country with its mud and stones continues to sweep up from the stage floor on huge panels. These great walls are also encrusted with mud and stones. The effect is volcanic - a complement to the cataclysmic emotions to be played at he base of these walls.

But just as the play also pays homage to an underlying fraternal love that is the foundation of George and Lennie's long years together, beauty also emerges in the harsh, surreal landscape.

Stern achieves dramatic parity with Shortt's stark universe. It comes through an even-handed, restrained approach and from an excellent, low-key cast.

In a comparable way, Lennie and George are encased in the same spiritual paralysis, as the two tramps in "Waiting for Godot" held immobile by expectation for something indefinably better.

Lennie and George become personifications of need and loneliness. Their hope - a farm of their own - is so distant. Lennie makes George repeat that hope over and over as if constantly to resuscitate it.

This brokenness is experienced elsewhere. Generally, Curly's wife is mistakenly played as the buxom trollop neglected by her husband and seeking validation in the lustful glances from the bunkhouse men.

There's also Crooks (Michael Anthony Williams), lonely in his separate quarters because he is black. And the aged, injured Candy (Dane Knell) is reduced to loving an aging collie.

Stern's "Of Mice and Men" transforms its ranch hands into universal themes that rise up and out of the bunkhouse. But even against starry heavens on stage, they look oversized.

reviewed Thursday night at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Mount Adams. Playdates: Tuesdays-Sundays through Oct. 6. Tickets: $37.50-$50.50; (513) 421-3888.

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