Two itinerant figures are locked together in a state of mutual dependence. They are also yearning for something that will make sense of their lives. Yet, although I've never heard it suggested that John Steinbeck's story influenced Waiting For Godot, there are times in Jonathan Church's fine production when you can't help seeing it as bunkhouse Beckett.
Normally I resist adaptations. But this is different, partly because Steinbeck himself instantly turned his dialogue-dominated 1937 novel into a play. Also the relationship between the feeble-minded giant, Lennie, and his slender protector, George, is one that cries out to be embodied. They are not just prototypes of all the buddy-buddy twosomes that dominate US novels and movies. With their depression-era vision of buying a farm, they epitomise the pipe-dream that sustains so much American drama.
What you also notice on stage is Steinbeck's fascination with society's marginal figures. Lennie, with his child's mind in a giant's body, is obviously an outsider. But so too is the California ranch's lone female, whose craving for company precipitates the story's tragedy.
Visualisation also reinforces the isolation of the black stable hand, Crooks, who bluntly tells the visiting Lennie: "I 'aint wanted in the bunkhouse and you 'aint wanted in my room."
The Savoy acoustic is not always friendly to Church's production even though it started in the vast Birmingham Rep. But at its heart is a very good performance by Matthew Kelly as Lennie. With his large, lunar features, lolling tongue and splayed fingers, he captures perfectly Lennie's sense of infantile dependence. Yet there is always the suggestion of strength in reserve. When he breaks the fingers of the abrasive Curley, the cracking sound, heard all over the theatre, seems entirely plausible.
George Costigan brings out the Beckettian exasperation as well as the residual affection of his protector. And there is staunch support from David Sterne as the ranch swamper as devoted to his smelly dog as George is to Lennie, from Joanne Moseley as Curley's solitary wife and from Tyrone Huggins as the surly black stable hand. Simon Higlett's set, atmospherically lit by Tim Mitchell, also conveys the ranch's timbered desolation.
Steinbeck's story, in fact, is not so much adapted as satisfyingly made manifest.
· Until December 6. Box office: 020-7836 8888.
