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:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 18 October 2010

How do you make an epic novel into a three-hour play? The book in question is Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the Mercury Theatre has just opened the Frank Galati adaptation in a production by Tony Casement. The set by Dawn Allsopp is sparse – a matter of fractured planks making a wide semi-circle around the acting area. Props are minimal and multi-functional.

Ben Payne’s lighting shifts us between the hours and between the thousands of miles travelled by the migrant families fleeing the dustbowl states of America’s mid-West for the promised land with its orange groves of California in the 1930s. It includes a superb night sky. So it’s all down to the acting if we are to become caught up emotionally in this particular odyssey.

Lynch-pin of the action, just as she is of her extended family, is Ma. Nicky Goldie gives a marvellously affecting portrait of this simple woman who refuses to let tragedy blight her soul. [Gary ...

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Latest User Review

Sue - 4 November 2010:

I felt as though I had seen a top West End play!!! The actress playing Ma was excellent. The set ideas were inspired and music added much to the whole show.Sad it is over as people I know wish they could have seen it!!...

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