Before it got into the hands of readers, John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men first got into the jaws of the author’s dog. The dog would find less to get its teeth into with this muted theatre adaptation.

A pair of itinerant friends find work at a ranch in the Great Depression-era US south. George is brashly confident and protective over timid Lennie who has a mental disability that’s stigmatised by the workers. In Sarah Brigham’s production, Lennie is played by Wiliam Young, who has learning disabilities. There is a softness to his Lennie, calling George’s name like a squeak. His dangerously nervy, busy hands constantly brush his beard or arms, while the production uses puppets for the animals he pets. His posture mirrors theirs: drooping like a sack of barley, folding in on himself.

Liam King’s George has pragmatism and impatience in his desperation to achieve a better life. A rustling field is projected whenever he imagines this dream. In one scene, he swings his legs on a bunk bed, as if they are just two boys fantasising together. All the time, a gold glow peeks through panels behind them.

However, scenes slide forward so steadily and incidentally that there’s little impact to register when the dream is lost. Brigham’s flat, static direction sits characters on barrels or crates for each scene. The action is set inside a stable-like pen, but there’s no rising temperature or undercurrent of cooped-up, coiled tension.

Violence is mannered and overly choreographed until the fateful turning point with Curley’s wife, when it becomes coldly impulsive. That yellow shimmer now burns orange like a furnace. And when the ranch doors are opened wide for the final scene, you can make out strings: the golden backdrop is a sheet. The bright and sunny dream is exposed as an illusion.

• Of Mice and Men is at the Octagon, Bolton, until 12 April