Two plays now occupying Boston-area stages concern the tense and tender symbiosis between two male protagonists — one savvy and paternal, the other brain-damaged and childlike. In both The Drawer Boy, which is playing at Merrimack Rep (see Iris Fanger’s review opposite), and Of Mice and Men, which opened last weekend at Stoneham Theatre, the guardians must resort to special, even extreme, measures to protect their charges from themselves.

John Steinbeck (with the consultation of George S. Kaufman) crafted a stageworthy play based on his successful 1937 novella about migrant farmworkers in the Salinas valley. (Carlisle Floyd also composed a compelling opera from the story.) Less a piece of social criticism than The Grapes of Wrath, the tale is about the failed pipe dreams and doomed relationships of ordinary men. Staged by Robert Walsh, the Stoneham Theatre production offers an intense and poignant realization of the drama set in Charles F. Morgan’s massive wooden " barn. " Gail Astrid Buckley dresses the characters in evocative rags that seem straight out of the Walker Evans sharecropper photographs displayed in the theater lobby.

The grim story begins as George Milton (Thomas Kee) and Lennie Small (Peter Robinson) take jobs and refuge in the lonely and seething microcosm of an unnamed Boss’s Salinas farm. Although they aren’t related, the resourceful George has taken responsibility for the simple-minded Lennie, who combines a childlike tenderness for furry little creatures and a Paul Bunyanesque size and strength that he can’t control. In his love for soft things, Lennie indiscriminately strokes mice, rabbits, puppies, and women — this last inevitably leads to calamity.

Until disaster strikes, George and Lennie hold fast to a dream — the migrant worker’s most commonplace yet seductive vision, a little piece of land to own and farm. On their stake, they would have a shack, a stove, a cow and some chickens, and a patch of alfalfa that Lennie would harvest to feed his rabbits. They would " live offa the fatta the lan.’  " And they would have each other when most people " ain’t got nobody in the worl’ that gives a hoot in hell about ’em. "

Most of their fellow farmworkers have dreams too. Old Candy (Ed Peed) wants to join George and Lennie, and they agree because he’s saved almost enough money to buy a stake. Candy has just lost his only companion, a blind, gimpy, aged sheepdog, and he may be enticed as much by the promised friendship as by the farm. Then there’s Curley’s wife (Laura Latreille), whose husband is the Boss’s scrappy son. She’s bored and sluttish, and her potential to ignite trouble is as flagrant as her cheap perfume. She dreams of heading off to Hollywood, where she could be in " the pitchers. " Only Crooks (Jasper McGruder), the black stablehand with the twisted spine, has no illusions. Segregated from the others, he nurses his bitterness in his solitary bunkroom (with the manure pile outside the window) and cruelly punctures Lennie’s dream and his trust in George.

The success of Steinbeck’s play depends on the two protagonists. Thomas Kee’s George conveys wise-guy worldliness, brotherly irritability, and grudging protectiveness; the towering Peter Robinson creates a gentle giant with the intelligence, impulsiveness, and sweetness of a four-year-old. Robinson’s vocabulary of gesture, expression, and body English is extraordinary — just observe Lennie in the first scene, when he’s sitting by a brook with George, his huge bulk collapsed in a tight S-curve, elbows between his knees, hands splayed, all innocence and vacuity.

Surrounding this duo is a fine ensemble cast. Peed is touching as Candy, though one has a little difficulty making out all his words. Peter Darrigo as Curley possesses just the right bantam physique and hair-trigger temper. Latreille is tarty but poignant as Curley’s wife. And with his drooping moustaches, Douglas Griffin’s Slim is sympathetic and affecting.