A principal difficulty when transposing a novel into a play is that of reduction. What do you leave out? How much do you rely on the actors, interacting physically with the audience, to realize the characterizations developed by the author? Once the technical aspects of staging are overcome, surely this must be the greatest of difficulties. Can you rely on the director to move the actors in the right direction; manipulate and coerce them to give the audience a true reading? Apparently Frank Galati has the utmost confidence, justified in this instance, in the abilities of any director ambitious enough to stage his adaptation of the Steinbeck classic The Grapes of Wrath.
This confidence comes because, first, Galati did very little reducing. This is a massive production. I can't think of a single important event in the novel that is compromised in the least. The immense scope of the novel, both in the sense of the enormity of the Joad family's displacement from their home and the vast distance they must travel with so little resources or hope, is translated admirably. Second, Galati doesn't mess with the dialogue - much. All but a few lines are direct quotes from the novel.
This latter aspect causes perhaps the most difficulty for director Kevin Sutley. The anguish of the Joad's uprooting from their home, the pitiable yet admirable spark of determination that drives these simple folk to seek freedom and, above all, Steinbeck's lovingly crafted characters are all realized with aplomb by a stellar cast tightly directed throughout. Sutley has cast the play brilliantly. It is important to remember that Studio Theatre is a university company and casting is not so much choosing the right actor for the job but choosing the best among those available. Here there is not a single bad performance and some are outstanding.
The play would founder without a convincing Ma Joad. She drives the family ever onward, placing it always foremost, sacrificing whatever she must to save the family. She is simple, yet has an impervious, though barely coherent, sense of what is fit and right and good; she seems to speak sense: simple, honest values and beliefs. Linda Huffman is the perfect Ma Joad. She is a fine enough actor to know the words she must speak reflect a simple mind. Ma Joad is uneducated and has little opportunity to stretch, but she owns a sensibility audiences can respond to with sympathy, if the audience can get around the words, the principal difficulty Sutley must overcome.
On the page, the Ozark hillbilly dialect and accent are set within a narrative that allows Steinbeck to define characters within a construct of his own ideas and values. His voice lends them dimension and verity that, on stage, must be created instead by the actual voices, cadences, movements and rhythms of the actors with a little help from music and lighting. Unfortunately, the past 30 years or so of cinema and television have done little for "Okies" but reduce them to a set of stock, cartoon characters. Merely assuming the accent evokes a smile. Speak the most heartfelt words from a simple mind and if that mind is an "Okie's," an actor risks a response of conditioned, dismissive laughter.
In his director's notes, Sutley delivers a tirade against the injustices heaped forever on people like the Joads everywhere and expresses his identification with them. His impassioned appeal helps set the tone of the play and helps overcome, in some small measure, this unfortunate hurdle he must overcome. This is a serious play, a story of heartbreak and the enormous difficulties overcome by simple people only searching for a decent, happy life. But too often throughout the evening, the actors were unable to overcome the handicap of the conditioned response. Though replete with humor, often the most heartfelt expressions of need and desire and fear and anger were met with inappropriate laughter. Fortunately, these were few. They were few because of the enormous talent on stage.
The principal roles besides Ma Joad are those of Tom Joad, perfectly cast in Jimmy Hodges, and Casey, the apostate preacher who eventually converts Tom to his peculiar brand of socialism. Tall and emaciated, Hodges is lovely as Tom. Just paroled after four years in prison he is, at first, cowed and timid. Gradually he's drawn back into the family, though his sense of duty to family continually wars with his awareness of injustice. His development is subdued and makes perfect sense.
John Kirkpatrick is equally terrific as Casey. Lost in quasi-philosophic reverie, Casey nonetheless manages to convey a sense of the desperation that drove tens of thousands to migrate west in search of a better life. Articulate but unable to put his finger on the germ of idea at the centre of his discontent, he muses along until, eventually, he finds a way to express himself. The role modulates from funny to ridiculous to pathetic to heroic and Kirkpatrick is truly up to it.
These are, though, only three of an enormous cast. There are more than 40 people in a cast that includes a great performance from Jared Matsunaga-Turnbull as Noah Joad; Mark Anderako is amazing as a man returning from California, destitute and bitter, but unbroken; Robert Corness is perfect as Uncle John; and, in a rare outing, director/actor Tony Cain calls a square dance! You may have heard rumors, and indeed one of the cast is not human, and there is a bit of technical stage verite in the second half that brought a spontaneous round of appreciative applause. This is a fine production of a work that has, still, much to say, and a fabulous beginning to Studio Theatre's fiftieth season.