The National Theatre absolutely loves to get a hip young playwright involved on update duties when it stages a revival of a classic play. So it’s a shame it didn’t commission - or possibly wasn’t allowed to commission - a fresher adaptation of John Steinbeck’s monumental 1939 novel than this starchy 1988 take by Frank Galati.
It’s not awful or anything, but its reverence for Steinbeck’s text – and determination to retain most of his characters and much of his dialogue – leaves it feeling like a radio play: lots of named characters talking, not quite enough happening (in the first half, anyway).
There’s a lot to be said for radio plays of course, Steinbeck’s blasted voyage through a crumbling Great Depression-era America is a masterpiece in book form and it’s to Galati’s credit that he gets most of its events into a little under three hours. There is of course a power in telling a classic story faithfully.
Director Carrie Cracknell has put a fantastic cast together. Harry Treadaway is magnetic as the steely but decent Tom Joad, who returns to his family home in the Oklahoma dustbowl after four years inside, only to discover that the Joad clan is on the verge of emigrating to California. And US stage star Cherry Jones – who played Nan Pierce in ‘Succession’ – is compelling as pragmatic, driven Joad matriarch Ma. Still, they feel a little sidelined by the text’s determination to cram everything in rather than focus on the leads – they’re substantial roles, but perhaps not to the degree they feel in the book.
It’s also an atypically trad production from the usually bolder Cracknell: the first half is very no frills, with the staging mostly just a screen with projections of sky on it, plus the Joad family’s battered Jalopy – an impressive prop but mostly it’s just used as a glorified bench.
Maimuna Memon’s Guthrie-esque original songs are a nice touch, and the use of a full folk band the most distinctive period touch in a production that often feels like it’s taking place in a black, abstract void (on the whole Cracknell’s production would have better suited the more spacious stage of the Olivier theatre).
The second half is unquestionably stronger: Alex Eales’s design is much better at conveying the tent cities of California than the expanses in between.
In the end it’s absolutely fine, but NT has a history of bringing overwhelming resources to bear on its revivals of classics to create something truly once-in-a-lifetime; this feels underpowered by those standards. Great story, great cast, great accents; but it’s not Cracknell’s most imaginative hour by a long shot – a fresh adaptation might have made all the difference. You’d have a heart of stone not to be sucked in by Steinbeck’s tale, but those grapes taste just a liiiittle bit sour.