FringeReview UK 2024
The Grapes of Wrath
National Theatre, London
Genre: Adaptation, American Theater, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre
Venue: National Theatre, Lyttelton
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
This is a surprise, almost a shock of the old, but not because of the novel. John Steinbeck’s overwhelming masterpiece from 1939 The Grapes of Wrath with its themes of starvation and inner migration from America’s dust bowl, seems more pertinent now than at any time since the 1980s. Of course Boys from the Blackstuff featured at the Olivier recently. Directed by Carrie Cracknell it plays at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton till September 14th.
Absorbing and essential, Grapes of Wrath is here as complete as you could wish.
Writer John Steinbeck Adaptor Frank Galati, Director Carrie Cracknell, Set Designer Alex Eales. Costume Designer Evie Gurney, Composer Stuart Earl, Original Songs Maimuna Memon, Lighting Designer Guy Hoares,
Sound Designers Donato Wharton, Movement Director Ira Mandela Siobhan, Music Director Osnat Schmool, Fight Director Kate Waters, Intimacy Co-ordinator Katharine Hardman for EK Intimacy,
Casting Director Alastair Coomer CDG and Naomi Downham, Dramatherapist Patricia Ojehonmon, Dialect Coach Hazel Holder, Voice Coach Shereen Ibrahim, Associate Sound Designer Joe Dines, Staff Director Georgia Green.
Producers Tracey Law and Debbie Farquhar, Production Manager Anthony Newton, Dramaturg Stewart Pringle. CSM Lindsey Knight
Till September 14th
Review
This is a surprise, almost a shock of the old, but not because of the novel. John Steinbeck’s overwhelming masterpiece from 1939 The Grapes of Wrath with its themes of starvation and inner migration from America’s dust bowl, seems more pertinent now than at any time since the 1980s. Of course Boys from the Blackstuff featured at the Olivier recently. Directed by Carrie Cracknell it plays at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton till September 14th.
Frank Galati’s 1988 adaptation is full and faithful, distilling everything into three hours, here slightly trimmed to two hours 50. It’s also extremely wordy; a little further trimming might have helped to give more air around the characters. There may be reasons why Cracknell had to choose it over a more incisive new version, but it’s certainly American theatre: that is long, drawn out like the great intimate dramas of Annie Baker, Richard Nelson or indeed O’Neill.
But because it’s also epic, episodic and wielding a huge cast, those dramatists way of rounding out the characters of Tom and Ma Joad are reduced: you read them by lightning. Consummately, certainly, with magnificent performances. But in the drawn-out melismas of how a family shrinks and almost dies, they’re like sparks in a campside fire and shrink a bit too. There’s a certain distance from the tragedy.
Nevertheless this is compulsory viewing, the storytelling absolute. Grapes of Wrath resonates even more now. With people not being able to afford to eat or rent, and refugees – repeatedly referenced in songs and text – echoed in this epic take on the migration of 400,000 people from the dust bowl to California, we can’t rule out this being our future: climate change, desperate flights north.
That sense of space might have been made a touch more of in Alex Eales’s set design, emphasising sky and desert in rather Brechtian style, though the opening dust-storm is exciting. Nevertheless there’s a memorable set coup in the first act. Eales also comes into his own not only in the Hudson Jalopy – slightly underused but wonderful – with the Hooverville and government tent cities of the second half, and final barn.
Evie Gurney’s costumes hit a high here too, and there’s more opportunity for Guy Hoares to show off lighting effects. Everything cranks up here and the true drama unleashes itself.
Stuart Earl’s composed a Guthrie-infused score, filleting through Maimuna Memon’s period-inflected songs which she leads on stage. Like P.J. Harvey’s in London Tide they expand the evening. Certainly Galati’s text needs something fresh.
The cast though energise from star to finish. Harry Treadaway draws you in to Tom Joad, released after four years for killing in self-defence and meeting ex-preacher Jim Casy (Natey Jones) and expecting to find his family. They’ve already left for Uncle John (Michael Shaeffer, portraying a man succumbing to drink). Jones and Treadway strike up a mentoring, or transmission of Casy’s militant humanism. Their interactions form one core of the drama.
The other is Cherry Jones’ compelling Ma Joad, dominating the family but not by force, rather a sense of justice Tom more than anyone inherits. The overwhelming final scene with Jones and Treadaway is the climactic point, apart from the end, and I’ve heard it realised with more space, paradoxically on radio. Cracknell allows spaciousness and dialogue – crucial in this endless trek – to unspool elsewhere. Here it was slightly wanting.
It’s effectively where Tom predicts (rightly or wrongly) his apotheosis as a Joe Hill-like figure which Treadaway exudes in gimlet-eyed watchful persona, ready to strike if needs, coiled to stay out of trouble but sprung into it. Here Treadaway rightly emphasises the urgency of Tom in flight: moments have to be snatched and the evening’s long enough. Powerful as this is though, it might have breathed a touch more.
The cast though are consistently fine, and idiomatic in Hazel Holder’s dialect coaching: it’s twangy but clear too. Cracknell has drawn compelling acting. Greg Hicks, recently in a Dostoevsky one-person show, makes far more of Pa Joad than usual, ruminating in the shadow of Ma. He’s more incisive in his condemnation, more convincing. Christopher Godwin impresses as truculent Granpa Joad then a vicious Contractor breaking strikes and paying less.
Tom Bulpett as otherworldly Noah Joad revisits Steinbeck’s Lennie in Of Mice and Men with a brilliant scribble of bafflement and assertion. He’s also the apex of the creek scene where a moment of Eales’ set is revealed like the sudden oasis it is; and several swim in it (it’s present, but dry as the flooding at the end).
Tucker St Ivory invests feckless womanizing mechanic Al Joad with a measure of humanity too, making a finer go of marriage to Robyn Sinclair’s exuberant Agnes Wainright than his sister’s feckless husband Connie Rivers (havering Anish Roy) who soon decamps.
Mirren Mack’s Rose of Sharon radiates joy, hope and future from the stage even if it isn’t the one she expects when giving birth. The other child who reveals Ma’s stamp is here magnetic in her final scene astonishing a starving man (Ryan Ellsworth, memorable as a vicious Hooverville Mayor) and his son (William Lawlor). It’s the final moments here where the drama truly lands. Cracknell realises this with an unhurried bleak beauty.
Lin Blakley’s Granma Joad shows how a spark can suddenly just go out. There’s neat cameos by Rhys Bailey and Emma Tracey (Winfield and Ruthie Joad), Morgan Burgess as a man returning east warning everyone and threatened with arrest. Afolabi Alli’s moment comes early as Muley Graves, living up to his name and refusing to budge from the land. Matthew Roman at one point makes a drawling corrupt Stetson-swanking Deputy; his spotless whites a sneer to the ‘bums’ he menaces.
Nearly all the cast take small roles: Zo Aldrich, Rachel Barnes, Brandon Bassir, Amelia Gabriel, Valentine Hanson (a hangdog Mr Wainright at the end), Harley Johnston, Cath Whitefield (vicious bible-bashing Elizabeth Sandry).
The end overwhelms as it must. Absorbing and essential, Grapes of Wrath is here as complete as you could wish. It might send you back to the book, though here theatre manages to compel and accelerate the Joad’s experience.
