The Grapes of Wrath

Synopsis

The epic story of the Joads journey across America is both a moving family saga and an extraordinary evocation of rural life during the Great Depression. Returning home from prison after killing a man in a drunken brawl, Tom Joad finds his family about to join the great exodus from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Like thousands of others, the Joads have their farm repossessed by the bank after the crops fail yet again. Now, three generations of the Joad family are left with no choice but to pile all their worldly goods onto a broken down truck and head west on Route 66, refugees in their own country. Held together by their indomitable matriarch, Ma Joad, they make for California, lured by tales of unlimited work and prosperity amidst the fruit groves and vineyards. Instead, their hopes and dreams - and lives - are shattered by what they find. Steinbeck s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is one of the greatest celebrations of the dignity and the endurance of the human spirit ever written. Famously filmed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Tom.

Our Review:

Maxwell Cooter - 17 July 2009

In an imaginative piece of programming, the Festival Theatre follows its production of Oklahoma! with The Grapes of Wrath. Thirty years after the action of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, we get to see what life Curly and Laurey would have forged for themselves; it's not a pretty sight as the optimism of Oklahoma's recognition is hit by the double-whammy of the Great Depression and drought.

John Steinbeck's novel - about a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers whose farm repossession triggers a desperate westward flight in search of the ‘promised land’ - is 70 years old, but it hasn't lost any of its power. And Jonathan Church's hard-hitting production preserves all of the original work's clout as well as offering an uncomfortable reminder of the parallels between the 1930s and the current economic situation.

Church superbly captures the power of Steinbeck’s story, helped enormously from the first scene...

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Latest User Review

POB - 5 October 2009:

saw teh preformance at Wimbledon thatre- suberb...

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