Best community-theater production

The committee that awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature cited John Steinbeck for his "sympathetic humor and sociological perception." While the Morrison Theatre Company's "Of Mice and Men" didn't always glisten with professional luster, director Alan Osburn nonetheless evoked Steinbeck's paean to companionship by encouraging portrayals that were as down-to-earth as a Frederic Remington painting. Thanks to the symbiotic bond that developed between Michael Wilson's George and Rick Bernstein's Lennie, the company's plainspoken ode to friendship resonated with two-fisted -- and quintessentially American -- candor.