“Of Mice and Men”, at the Kammerspiele der Josefstadt
Dana Rufolo in Vienna
5 December 2025
★★★☆☆
Von Mäusen und Menschen, the stage adaptation at the Kammerspiele der Josefstadt of John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men, is directed by Torsten Fischer with the intention of paralleling the English language text, creating a core of dialogue and action bookended by a staged reading of the words in the novel that begin and end the narrative. Therefore, the production stayed faithful to Steinbeck’s written words, giving the drama about the sorrows and heartbreaks of itinerant farmworkers during the Great Depression a poetic quality. The overarching concept was that hope of a better future sustains these farmworkers until suddenly the future turns bitter on them; the American Dream proves unattainable. The Viennese public applauded the play vigorously, indicting that they were charmed by the production’s emphasis on the discrepancy between dreamy fantasy and harsh reality poured into a Western American setting.
Claudius von Stolzmann and Robert Joseph Bartl.
Photo credit: Moritz Schell.
And yet, the poetic quality of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is not the dominant note in the novella. In this Austrian production, Fischer over-romanticized. It calls to mind Karl May’s late nineteenth-century novels about the American Indians. His fellow Germans were charmed by them, because the cultural system May describes mirrors a preconceived romantic vision of native life and beliefs. May never travelled to America; he relied on books to invent native American customs and created appealing characters like the Apache chief Winnetou who corresponded to European norms. This is precisely the difference between the Viennese production and Steinbeck: Fischer emphasized the romantic nostalgic message that the American dream is seldom achieved, but Steinbeck wrote from personal experience of being a farmhand, meaning that the novel’s romantic and sad meta-message is fractured by inconsistencies. Although the translation into German by Katrin Janecke and Günter Blöcker is exact, and there are original accompanying folksongs in English to keep us aware that the play is set in America, Von Mäuser und Menschen feels like a summary and not quite the real McCoy.
Steinbeck’s novel describes how two men from the same town travel together through the west of America as hired workers. George is a normal guy who can think and reason, and Lennie is a large extra-strong man whose mental acuity is sub-normal. More than that, he is unaware of his own strength and has an instinctive lust to pet soft things – initially mice and ultimately a woman who is married to Curly, a member of the family who owns the farm he and George are working at. Invariably, these “soft things” are mauled and killed, because Lennie applies too much force and is unable to let go. He is seen as a friendly stupid guy, but he is also dangerous, and in the end – living outside the law as these men and the large farms they work on do – George has to shoot Lennie, at the same time killing his antidote to loneliness and his dream of one day owning a small farm with Lennie – the dream that had kept them hopeful. This execution parallels the shooting of the sick and old but deeply loved dog belonging to the farmhand Candy that occurs earlier in the story. Candy, played with gentle melancholy by Günter Franzmeier, is deprived of a beloved to lavish love upon, just as George is.
Claudius von Stolzmann and Paula Nocker.
Photo credit: Moritz Schell.
It is precisely Lennie’s disability that muddies the water of metaphor. The two men dream of working long enough on this last farm to save up their pay and buy a tiny farm that George knows is for sale. Candy offers to put in his savings and gets to join them. On this farm they dream of acquiring, they will fish in the stream and raise rabbits and rest their backs against a warm hearth and live contentedly, not working for anyone else but as Lennie (quoting George) says, “liv’ an the fatta the lan”. If Steinbeck’s Lennie had been a typical wandering farmhand like George, which would have been a feasible narrative alternative, then the loss of this dream would have been purer and more poignant. Fischer wished to focus on that loss. However, Lennie’s imbecility means that it can also be seen as a story about poor knowledge of human psychology or about how childhood accidents due to inattentive adult behavior can cause brain damage. In effect, Steinbeck wrote from personal experience. He wrote down a character who is somehow believable and also lawless in an uncanny way, probably because he met such a person. He wrote Of Mice and Men as a historical biography, not as a morality story.
Fischer cast Robert Joseph Bartl in the role of Lennie; Bartl is associated with playing a guy who is innocently antisocial, even evil, having in 2024 played Josef Schmitz in the Theater in der Josefstadt’s production of Max Frisch’s Fire Raisers (Biedermann und die Brandstifter). A tall corpulent man, Bartl fit the role of Lennie, but he lacked the impetuosity that Steinbeck’s character exhibits. For instance, Steinbeck mentions that Lennie mouths the words that George speaks, and although this could easily be a tic revealing his character, Lennie rarely subvocalizes on stage, and so the audience never receives an important clue as to Lennie’s mental disability. Moments when George orders Lennie to respond or withdraw are played with understatement by Claudius von Stolzmann as George. If he had belted out the orders, the parallel between Lennie and a dog would have been more evident. But this George is always even-toned and gentle voiced.
The stage space represents the inside of the bunkhouse where the farmhands sleep. An upright metallic circular fan with slow and steady rotating rotary blades that reveals the large farm’s mechanized nature is the dominant element on the set designed by Herbert Schäfer. It matches the slow, even pace of the dialogue and the relentless passage of time – its circularity implying that repetitiveness and no evolution forward into a better life is possible for these people. The characters stay close to the ground, often sitting or lying on pillows on the floor. (As soon as the audience in the parterre includes a number of taller people whose heads block the view for those behind, the result is that audience members towards the rear can’t see chunks of action; the director should have compensated to avoid this difficulty.)
The dynamics between the family that owns the farm – including the pugilistic son of the owner Curley (played by Luka Vlatković) and his young, disillusioned wife (Paula Nocker) – and the farmhands was entertaining, subtle and even-keyed. Curley is constantly searching for his wife and is ready for a fight, and when Lennie crushes Curley’s hand, a forewarning of the murder to come, this sign of danger is concealed because the farmhands view Lennie as their hero who wins out against a disliked adversary. Paula Nocker played the sole woman on stage with a subtle infusion of conflicting emotions; sexually appealing and attracted by the farmhands, she is also lonely and disillusioned, as lost as are the men she covertly hangs out with.
Slim is played by Paul Matić as Steinbeck wrote him as calm and empathetic with leadership qualities; George’s turning towards Slim for advice suggests a son-father relationship. Carlson also (Alexander Strömer) adds dynamism and realism to the goodwill that these men enjoy when together. Rather than a black American who is racially excluded, Crooks (Ljubiša Lupo Grujcic) is an illegal immigrant. This was the only deviation from the original text in the entire production.
