By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MIDDLETOWN - Rising Phoenix is one of a number of area theaters whose ambitions rise above the common perception of "amateur" or "civic" theater but which lack the dollars to back up the vision.

All of them, I imagine, are working toward a future when art and budget come together in a beautiful relationship. At the moment, the most they can offer members of their companies is a stipend that probably covers the cost of gas.

The reason this matters is that it's all but impossible for a theater to mount a show with a large cast under these circumstances. Some people will be competent and some people won't. The odds are against finding a director who can make a play electrifying.

That's no way to treat a classic like John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Of Mice and Men is, of course, the story of George (Adam Ziemkiewicz) and Lennie (Brian Kidd), migrant farm workers who share the American Dream of a place of their own. Actually, it's George's dream. For Lennie, who has the strength of a Goliath and the understanding of a child, it's more of a bedtime story.

One fateful weekend, they bunk at a ranch in the Salinas Valley. There's trouble even before the curtain goes up. Lennie had badly frightened a young woman at their last job and they are on the run.

At the new job, they find themselves - unbelievably - within reach of the dream, if they can sort their way through the potential nightmare of the boss' bully son (an able Michael Pincelli), hot-headed and rabidly jealous of his new bride (Molly Wanko) who, if not a tramp is certainly a tart.

Of Mice and Men is all about the brutality of American life in the 1930s, where there is no justice for anyone who doesn't fit in. Not Lennie, not the black stablehand (a nuanced performance by Charles McClinon), not an aging ranch hand who's lost his arm on the job and whose use and time is running out. Just as much, it's about tenderness, humanity and friendship.

This Of Mice and Men never reaches. Director Elizabeth Knight never lets us know why the play has achieved the status of American classic.

While Mr. Kidd does well as childlike Lennie, there's never any sense of why Mr. Ziemkiewicz's George stays in the partnership.

Too many scenes are static; too often moments with big dramatic payoffs are telegraphed long in advance.

The way I know if a production of Of Mice and Men is what it should be is that by the end there's a fist tightened around my heart. This production's tragedy is that it doesn't make me care enough.

Of Mice and Men, through Sunday, Rising Phoenix, (513) 705-4131.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com