Tim Hughes is transported to Great Depression era America in an emotional tale of hope, friendship and grinding poverty

IT is late evening in California's farm belt. A lone fiddler saws out the strains of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land as two dishevelled men lay down their sleeping rolls and settled down for an uncomfortable night under the stars.

We are bang in the heart of the Great Depression - migrant workers on the move, trying to scrape a living in the fields of California's Promised Land - and we can practically taste the dust.

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck's evocative tale of 1930s rural America is a mainstay of modern literature, portraying - like that other great Dust Bowl classic, The Grapes of Wrath - the the brutality and hardship of the era.

And the Touring Consortium Theatre Company's 20th anniversary production transports us right into the midst of that heat-hazed, dirt-poor land and the lives of those two lost souls: wandering labourer George and his (in George's words) "nuts" sidekick Lennie.

William Rodell nails the part of George as the tough-speaking, quick-witted but compassionate farm hand who has taken Lennie (Kristian Phillips) under his wing.

It would be hard to find anyone better qualified to play Lennie than Phillips – a man-mountain who succeeds in portraying his role's childlike innocence, insecurity, loyalty and flashes of unthinking violence without resorting to cliche.

These are believable characters - from the simple Lennie to the trustworthy wrangler Slim (Jonah Russell) cruel, uptight bully Curley (Ben Stott) and his bored and lonely wife (Saoirse-Monica Jackson). Even the dog (Banbury hound Suga) seems to carry the weight of poverty and oppression on its shoulders.

Faithful to the book and the era, with its ingrained sexism and racism, the language continue to shock - with liberal use of the 'n' word. But it all adds to the authenticity. So too does Liz Ascroft's set - effortlessly transformed from dusty fields to bunk house and barn - all overlooked by a door in the distant sky. The floor, meanwhile is cracked - a fault line doubling up as creek and broader metaphor - not least for the fault in Lennie's head.

There is humour and wise-cracking, but this is a tragic tale - an awful story of broken dreams and how the quickest of mistakes can have far-reaching, fatal, consequences. And it is told here in all its dusty, sweaty, fear-soaked harshness. And it is unmissable.

TIM HUGHES 5/5