THEATRE REVIEW: THE GRAPES OF WRATH
2 JUN/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

STRATFORD - Like most of the great stories in our world, THE GRAPES OF WRATH is a story that recognizes no borders, either in space or time, even while it is firmly anchored in both. The time is the Great Depression, its greatness undiminished by ensuing decades, and the place — well, it stretches from the desolation of dust-bowl Oklahoma to the lush and fertile verdure of California.

But the story it tells is the story of the dispossessed of every era and of every nation, first distilled into a single novel by John Steinbeck. Long ago, that novel inspired a memorable movie but it has, until now, defied the theatrical stage, where Steinbeck is better known for OF MICE AND MEN, and where the challenge of capturing the broad sweep of GRAPES, without diminishing its fragile humanity, has proved too daunting. But now, thanks to adaptor Frank Galati, many of those challenges have been faced and few overcome in an adaptation created for the artists of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and now serving as the basis for a production by the Stratford Festival that opened Wednesday in the Avon Theatre.

For the uninitiated, this is the story of a single family, the Joads, stripped of everything but dignity and a will to survive, who decide to make their way to California’s promised land after drought forces them from the farm they’d wrenched from Oklahoma’s fertile soil. But they find little milk of human kindness in this new land of milk and honey, where they are seen as sub-human interlopers, to be used and then simply discarded.

But, for the family Joad — Ma and Pa (played respectively by Janet Wright and Victor Ertmanis) and their grown children, the recently paroled Tom (Evan Buliung), the hormone-driven Al (Paul Nolan), the outsider Noah (Steve Ross) and the newly married and pregnant Rose of Sharon (Chilina Kennedy) as well as assorted hangers on — it is a journey not just of a physical nature but of a spiritual one as well. Under the tutelage of Jim Casy (Tom McCamus), a one-time preacher fallen from the faith, the Joads slowly re-invent the old time religion of their forbearers to accommodate a vision of the shared spirituality of humanity — a vision that resonates with even more truth today perhaps than when it was written, in a world where mankind still struggles with defining our role as our brothers’ keepers.

Under the direction of Antoni Cimolino, who also serves as the Fest’s general director, this is a major undertaking, involving not only an extensive cast but a talented design team that includes John Arnone (sets), Carolyn M. Smith (costumes) and Steven Hawkins (lights). Together, they successfully capture the physical sweep and the desolation of a story that stretches from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the fruit bowl of California — a voyage driven by a trio of faux-Okie musicians, whose attempts to camouflage scene changes serve instead as a dramatic drag, like ill-considered singing Burma Shave ads on the side of a scenic highway.

In condensing Steinbeck’s tale of hope and desolation and bringing it to life, Galati has understandably gone for the pith of the original dialogue and while his choices all serve the moral centre of the story, they also conspire to rob many of his characters of the little touches that serve to make them human.

Of course, superb actors like Buliung and McCamus bring dimension to even the most underdrawn characters, but in the main, while there are a few touching moments courtesy of actors like Ross and Robert King, others like Wright and Ertmanis never seem to achieve that vital third dimension that brings the theatre to life. And as a result, this remains far more pageant than play — an homage to a great work of literature rather than a groundbreaking new stage play.