Kelly's Lennie is ultimately poignant

Ten months after he was released without charge after being falsely accused of child sex offences, Matthew Kelly arrived at the Savoy Theatre to play a gentle giant who is misunderstood, persecuted, and ultimately threatened with jail.

Those in search of ironies would not have been disappointed as Kelly stridently defied any lurking malicious gossip by bravely playing a man who, in the novelist John Steinbeck's words, likes "to pet nice things".

Virtually unrecognisable without his beard, Kelly looms on to the stage with the idiot gawp and uncomprehending naivety of Lennie, one of 20th century literature's most sadly compelling figures.

Steinbeck's classic novel has been translated into two Broadway productions and four films, so Kelly is inevitably drawing comparisons with such actors as John Malkovich who starred as Lennie in Gary Sinise's 1992 movie.

Although the Stars In Their Eyes presenter is no Malkovich, it has to be conceded that despite a wobbly accent and a somewhat awkward start he acquits himself with honour as the itinerant farmhand who cannot love anything without destroying it.

Kelly certainly evokes Steinbeck's "huge man, shapeless of face... dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags its paws". Even though initially he seems to be playing too much for laughs, he relaxes into a nuanced and ultimately tragically poignant performance of the man who innocently likes stroking everything from mice to peroxide hair.

The simple-minded Lennie, is forced to wander the vast and unforgiving expanse of California in the Thirties looking for work as a farm-hand.

Steinbeck wrote the novel with a script-like dialogue for easy staging, and through Lennie's friendship with George, he shows the value of male bonding in a world where men had little to enjoy but a hard slog on the farm, the odd slurp of whisky, and an occasional prostitute.

The book's enduring status as a classic has raised the issue that as a set text any production-will be visited by coaches of schoolchildren.

Earlier reviews of the play as it has toured the country have indicated that difficult-to-entertain adolescents have been as supportively enthusiastic as London's whooping first-night audience.