London Critics Praise ‘Grapes of Wrath’

Like the Joad family, Steppenwolf’s production of “The Grapes of Wrath” keeps moving on. From Chicago to the La Jolla Playhouse. From La Jolla to London, where it has just opened at the National Theater of Great Britain, to extraordinary reviews.

“As shatteringly perfect a piece of American theater as you are likely to experience in a lifetime of trans-Atlantic travel,” wrote critic Jack Tinker in the Daily Mail.

“You would have to have a heart carved out of granite not to be moved by this magnificent production,” wrote the Sunday Express’ Clive Hirschhorn.

Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel was praised for retaining its epic quality without getting bogged down in rhetoric. Michael Billington of the Guardian thought that in one respect, the stage version improved on the book. “Speeches that on the page looked sentimental or rhetorical, come alive in the mouths of these excellent Chicago actors.” The acting impressed even the few critics who didn’t think the story translated well into stage terms. Milton Shulman of the Evening Standard spoke of the company’s “almost balletic precision.”

John Peter in the Sunday Times: “It is the best kind of American acting, gritty and gnarled with a simple rhetoric which knows that it has no need of bombast or hysteria. The actors are sharply individualized and yet self-effacing.”

Jeremy Kingston of the Times singled out Gary Sinise for his “intense and sinewy” performance as young Tom Joad--a tough assignment with memories of Henry Fonda’s 1940 screen performance still in everyone’s head.

What couldn’t be included in the prudish 1940s was Steinbeck’s image of the daughter giving her milk to a dying man. That image is used here, and it struck the Financial Times’ Claire Armitstead as “one of violated innocence and madonna-like purity in the face of an unutterable horror”--not only appropriate for the story, but the only possible ending for it.

Several critics also pointed out that “The Grapes of Wrath” hasn’t lost its relevance in the 1980s, a time when migrant workers and farm foreclosures are still in the news. This made Steppenwolf’s guest production, not only admirable but, in Billington’s view, “necessary.”

Next step for the Joads: New York. After these reviews, it’s almost a certainty.