Theatre review: The Grapes of Wrath

It turns out The Grapes of Wrath isn't actually about haemorrhoids - John Steinbeck's Great American Novel^TM, in an adaptation by Frank Galati which Carrie Cracknell revives at the Lyttelton, wouldn't be dealing with anything as light-hearted as that. Instead this is a definitive story of the Great Depression, and the production opens with a dramatic, balletic series of scenes (movement direction by Ira Mandela Siobhan) showing the wind ravaging the people and the overfarmed land, creating the famous Dust Bowl which left farming families across America without an income. We follow the extended Joad family, led by the endlessly kind Ma (Cherry Jones) and terminally passive Pa (Greg Hicks,) as they drive to California where, according to flyers that have been distributed across the country, there are many good jobs to be found picking peaches and grapes.

Eldest son Tom (Harry Treadaway) gets paroled after 4 years in prison for killing someone in self-defence, and returns to the family home in Oklahoma Exclamation Mark to find it in ruins. He joins the rest of his family on the road, along with Jim Casy (Natey Jones,) the town's former preacher who's lost his faith.

So the first act is like a grim version of a road trip movie: Between the whole family piling onto their one jalopy and losing another member with every scene there's a feel of Mother Courage crossed with The Beverly Hillbillies as Ma steadfastly encourages them on to their goal, even as they encounter haunted people going the other way, warning that the misery and starvation will only get worse when they reach California.

After the interval we see those warnings come true as the remaining Joads move from camp to camp in search of work. Needless to say this is a pretty bleak story although there's flashes of humour and a big barn dance scene to give both the characters and the audience moments of respite. I haven't read the novel but in Galati's version at least it makes its point with a mix of the subtle - essentially letting us follow the people exploited by those holding all the power and money and come to our own conclusions - and the heavy-handed - the flyers turn out to be an elaborate ploy to flood the California job market so that the desperate workers will be forced to accept work for a pittance.

For me perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story is the way any resistance is met with violent crackdowns under the justification that it's "Red" talk, and it's extraordinary how successfully the USA has managed to use the suggestion of socialism as a bogeyman to shut down any talk of improving workers' rights for over a century. More extraordinary perhaps is that the idea of the Great American Novel^TM can persist as such a respected part of the American psyche without its central message being equally respected (except, I guess, for the ones whose message is about how killing whales and bulls is GRATE.)

There's definitely a feel of Galati trying to squeeze as much of a vast epic in as possible, with some threads left hanging: Much is made of Tom's brother Al (Tucker St Ivany) realising that joining them in crossing state lines will violate his probation, but that particular Chekhov's Gun gets stored away for good. On the other hand Uncle John's (Michael Shaeffer) alcoholism is something we're only informed of at the end when it's about to come into play. Maimuna Memon's original songs, performed tonight by understudy Robyn Sinclair, mostly add haunting atmosphere, although these too can veer into the unsubtle: The second act opens with a song laboriously spelling out the parallels with modern-day economic migrants and refugees. And Ian pointed out that the band essentially function as harbingers of doom, as every time they amble on more bad news is bound to be delivered.

If Cracknell's production is as uneven at dealing with the story's scope and misery as the adaptation itself is, it's rarely let down by its performances, centring around Treadaway's stoical but volatile Tom. When he tells his mother that the speech she's just given is the most he's heard her say in his life I couldn't help but agree that, if they're going to ship Cherry Jones in across the Atlantic, the least they could have done was given her some dialogue; Jones does do an extraordinary amount with what she's got though.

Mirren Mack as the pregnant Rose of Sharon has the onerous task of carrying a big dramatic climax that probably works symbolically on the page but finally tips the scales into melodrama on the stage, meaning that the evening's more overwrought elements are the enduring impression. It's certainly a mixed experience then: For a show featuring a long, deadly journey across dusty pains it doesn't drag as much as it could have (even with, for my second NT trip in a row, the show having to be stopped for technical reasons when a curtain on Alex Eales' set failed to go up.) But the effort to include as many characters and plots as possible means they only intermittently come to life.

The Grapes of Wrath by Frank Galati, based on the novel by John Steinbeck, is booking until the 14th of September at the National Theatre's Lyttelton.

Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith.