Review of the Grapes of Wrath at the National Theatre

It is a very difficult task to adapt John Steinbeck's brilliant 1939 book, the Grapes of Wrath, for the stage. It is a brave dramatic act to even try, let alone achieve. This attempt at the National Theatre, using Frank Galati's adaptation, makes a great effort, encapsulating many of the moods of desperation and defiance of adversity but whether it totally gets there is open to question. There is a fine effort to depict the dust belt existence of people living in poverty stricken 1930s America. Migrating to find work and survive, whilst being constantly harassed on the journey by a variety of agents of officialdom.They move on in the belief of salvation, among the grape pickers of California but this proves a false dream The casting of the Joad family is imaginative, with Harry Treadaway as Tom, Gregg Hicks as Pa and Cherry Jones as Ma. Natey Jones also excels as the fallen preacher Jim Casey. The set design of Alex Eales is excellent, with the overloaded car dominating the first half of the performance. The imagery portraying the whole family loading everything onboard, then travelling to California is striking. Rivers appear centre stage and the depiction of a number of fires is intriguing. Scenes change more rapidly in the second half, with sprawling shanty town style camps dominating. The depiction of the family, being tossed around, whilst increasingly powerless to control their own destiny is cleverly portrayed. The fight director Kate Waters and movement director Ira Mandela Siobhan deserve credit for bringing a vivacity to the fight scenes. The slow motion action works really well. The way in which those trying to organise the workers to collectively bargain, then getting beaten down, is clear in the narrative, though more could have been made of this element. Throughout, there is the wandering band of players, led by Maimuna Memo , whose folk score brings a haunting, atmospheric to proceedings. It would have been good to see a 21st century adaptation make more of the backdrop of man made environmental devastation causing people to migrate in order to survive. It is a message as true today as in the dust belt of 1930s America. But then Galati's original adaptation was done in the 1980s. Director Carrie Cracknell does a good job of bringing the book to the stage. A challenging task, done with imagination, if limitation. Overall, this is a good effort to adapt the Grapes of Wrath. The sheer suffering of the people but the resilience of the human spirit comes through strongly. Well worth seeing but do read the original book afterwards, to complete the experience. Runs to 14 September