The Grapes of Wrath, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre
After launching his career at Birmingham Rep with a famous production of Of Mice and Men, Jonathan Church has turned his attention to John Steinbeck’s other great novel at his current theatre, the Chichester Festival.
This time it is a co-production with English Touring Theatre and the resulting scale and production values, with a cast of 20, are extremely impressive. As well as animals and children, perhaps actors should be wary of the scene-stealing talents of vintage lorries.
Steinbeck and his interpreters paint a vast canvas in conveying the scale of the tragedy of drought and depression in the 1930s mid-west, which drove thousands of families west in search of employment, only to find cynical exploitation.
But tellingly the first scene, the chance encounter on the road between Tom Joad, returning from jail, and Casey, the former preacher turned sceptic, has a focused intimacy (and a clarity of delivery from Damian O’Hare and Oliver Cotton that we don’t always experience in this theatre) which immediately gives a momentum to the narrative which is sustained throughout the first act.
After the interval the results are slightly more mixed and the American accents, initially so persuasive, become noticeably frayed at times. But there are spectacular moments, none more so than the despairing scene in which the Joads’ daughter has a stillborn baby in a thunderstorm and they wander like a family of Lears abandoned by the richest nation on earth.
It is a long and gruelling evening, but a rewarding one. Its conclusion that salvation lies in the organisation of labour – the finally revealed significance of that first-scene encounter – may be unfashionable now, but difficult to counter on the evidence that met Steinbeck’s eyes.
His rich cast is brilliantly evoked, above all by Sorcha Cusack’s magnificent performance as the family’s bedrock, Ma Joad. Simon Higlett’s design is outstanding and John Tams provides an evocative soundtrack.
* Running time: Three hours. Until October 31.
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