The Grapes of Wrath

(seen at the afternoon performance on 31st July 2024)

Apparently, the height of wit in the 1990s Metropolitan Police Force was to present any officer undergoing a haemorrhoidectomy with a pristine copy of “The Grapes Of Wrath.” Readers can feel free to let the monkey know if this is still the case. Or not. As it would prefer.

Beyond that, the monkey has never read Steinbeck’s book (but it has read “Travels with Charley,” which it bets few readers have heard of (again, let it etc, etc). Thus, the entire story is fresh to it.

There is a reason “Of Mice and Men” is taught in schools over this far superior work. Far fewer characters for the less able to keep track of, and all are more vividly drawn – cartoonish, even. 

Here, Frank Galati’s adaptation renders the entire Joad family as an amorphous interdependent group. It makes it rewardingly hard distinguishing individuals, our first reminder of the dead hand of government and commerce destroying each unique life unthinkingly.

This makes it easier to demonstrate the effects of economic breakdown dissolving family ties and simplifies every dramatic departure. With Carrie Cracknell’s usual staging clarity, the cast do the rest.

From defrocked preacher Jim Casy (Natey Jones) meeting newly paroled Tom Joad (Harry Treadaway) we are in confident hands. Both actors excel as men who have hit the walls of the world and are now finding new paths around them.

The rest of the Joad family are equally interesting. Ma (Cherry Jones) and Pa (Greg Hicks) are people determined to try – the American dream dusting them with optimism.

As Rose of Sharon, Mirren Mack’s pregnancy bump will not fool a midwife in the audience (Evie Gurney, costume designer, give Mack an expanding padded bra to be authentic), but her performance is tender and her final moment movingly bitter commentary on the preceding three hours.

Ryan Ellsworth also distinguishes himself in the final scene, having already produced memorably excellent small characters throughout. Many of the cast indeed perform several roles, and it is a credit to them that each is well enough drawn that they feed into the progress across the country without repetition. 

Annoyingly, for all their efforts, this does feel somewhat over-written and a little over-staged. We often get the gist of moments and interactions in a few lines, making scenes feel unnecessarily elongated to explain what we already understand. 

Alex Eale’s set sometimes amuses, sometimes impresses but also has some irritatingly distracting gimmicks. Guy Hoare seems not always to capture the light of the current environment; his desert and mountain roads seem similar. Some crackling from Donato Wharton’s sound design were also unhelpful, actors voices were sometimes lost when turning upstage.

While soothing (except for the audience imbecile humming along and disturbing all around him), the musical interludes also add nothing but running time when they could be simple background accompaniment. A hoedown in particular prolongs without underlining anything meaningful.

As an introduction to the novel (which the monkey now intends to read) and as a demonstration of American humanity and spirit it is peerless. As a political commentary something is lost by focussing on family and not spending enough time on the unionists, particularly in the second half.

This is about the rebirth of a nation for good or ill, and this adaptation at times feels too sleight for such enormity. Solid if slightly stolid, these grapes are less wrathful than ponderous, and the feeling of something epic is missing. Distilled in the mind, there is a bite of sorts, but not quite the full-body taste of the original source materials, fictional and real.