Behind the scenes: Of Mice and Men #5

Written by Caroline Baum

Week 5: The Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Barry Ryan as George and Anthony Dean Griffey as Lennie

‘I’ve been here thirty years, no one told me make up had moved!’ says Barry Ryan. Wandering the labyrinthine corridors he’s eventually found his way to the very shmick new make-up room which replaces a space the size of a cupboard. Jacqueline Mabardi is having arched period eyebrows painted on while Barry gets some stubble.

There’s a real buzz in the air when everyone finds out that composer/librettist Carlisle Floyd is going to be at the piano dress rehearsal.

Anthony Dean Griffey as Lennie

Now in his late eighties, the spry dapper gentleman with the soft southern drawl is surprisingly chipper after his non-stop flight from Florida and ecstatic about being inside the Opera House (‘to see this and Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao in the same year is really something,’ he whispers) accompanied by his niece Jane, whose husky voice hints at her own talent as a jazz singer.

 

No one told the dog the composer was attending.  Even with the creator present, it does not perform as it should. There’s way too much tail wagging.

‘That dog looks very alive,’ says Floyd. It certainly does not behave as if it’s on its last legs. Floyd makes a useful suggestion: maybe the handler could dress up as a ranch hand to be on stage for more reassurance and control. Having seen more than twenty productions of this piece, Floyd knows all the tricks. ‘I remember one time the dog just walked off in the middle of the scene,’ he chuckles. From the mutterings at the production desk, my guess is that Bruce is thinking: ‘Come back Frankie (his red heeler, sacked in week one, see Blog Week 2) all is forgiven!’

Jacqueline Mabardi as Curley's Wife

‘That’s nice,’ murmurs Floyd appreciatively when he sees how Bruce brings Curley’s wife into the scene in Act 2. It’s great to see how open he is to new ways of presenting a work that must feel as close to him as one of his own children. The scene change from Act 1 to Act 2 now happens so fast that the extra minute of music he wrote so obligingly at Bruce’s request is not actually necessary but no one’s contemplating dropping it now.

Someone needs to tell the dog to lift its game.

At least - unlike La bohème - there are no children in the show.  




See Barry Ryan and Anthony Dean Griffey sing in Of Mice and Men in the below YouTube video, "An' we'll live off the fat of the land":