John Steinbeck's indignation and compassion informed a fundamentally important American novel from which a great and gritty film was made about the Oklahoma share-croppers, driven from their dust-bowl to lives of exploitation, degradation and death in sunny California. Yet many American rednecks still pursue and persecute those with social consciences whom they perceive as "reds", even if labour laws in the US have since been greatly strengthened.
Steinbeck himself was investigated by the FBI who thought to find a communist lurking in his stoutly American head.
If the book and the film did not wholly succeed in converting everyone (even Life magazine found his indignation too "Liberal" to publish), what hope would there be for a stage adaptation? The first such adaptation I saw, more than 20 years ago, left only the memory of a group of people talking incessantly in an obviously wooden pick-up truck motionless in the centre of a big stage. And Frank Galati's adaptation for Chicago's Steppenwolf, seen on Broadway about 10 years ago, still leaves only a misty memory of ponderous acting and unpersuasive staging.
This new production by Storytellers and the Cork Opera House, directed by Mark Lambert, seems more engaging than the production in New York. The accents may often be astray and some words get swallowed as a result, but the emotional purpose which Steinbeck created is evident almost throughout.
Yet the suspicion remains that it will not stay in the memory as well as either book or film, which had too broad a canvas to fit easily into the focus of live theatre. It is an essentially untheatrical enterprise which requires just too much faith from its audience, too great a suspension of disbelief in the events as they can be portrayed on a relatively bare stage.
Monica Frawley has provided an ingeniously constructed setting which must always be evident artifice in dust storms, floods and a 2,000 mile journey in a truck. And the performances, sound as they may be emotionally, do not persuade us that we are looking at three, going on four, generations of the Joad family. The violence, when it occurs, seems too casual because the script is necessarily condensed. Such good actors as Peter Gowen, Nick Dunning, Bernadette McKenna, Gerry O'Brien, Mary Murray, Jude Sweeney and more can only be cyphers in the cramped text.
Theatre is not the ideal medium for this Steinbeck, but it might trigger its audiences to read the book.
Runs in Galway until Saturday January 27th - booking at (091) 569777. In Cork Opera House January 30th to February 3rd: booking at (021) 4270022. In Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, February 6th to 10th: booking at (01) 6771717.
