Review Roundup: What Did The Critics Think of Carrie Cracknell's Adaptation of THE GRAPES OF WRATH?

Carrie Cracknell (Julie, The Deep Blue Sea) directs Frank Galati’s award-winning adaptation of John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath, now open at The National Theatre.

Forced to travel West in search of a promised land, the Joad family embark on an epic journey across America in the hope of finding work and a new life in California.

Their story is one of false hopes, wrong turns and broken dreams, but also a hymn to human kindness and a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit.

Tony Award-winner Cherry Jones (The Glass Menagerie, Succession) is joined by Harry Treadaway(The Chemistry of Death, Penny Dreadful) in this moving and deeply atmospheric story of a struggle against a hostile climate to find a place to call home.

What did the critics think?

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Cindy Marcolina: BroadwayWorld: We follow the Joad family in their Odyssey from Oklahoma to California in an attempt to find a better life in an adaptation by Frank Galati. Trapped by a series of dust storms that damaged the crops and annihilated their chances to survive the economic crisis, leaving their home is the only choice they have. The piece is heavy in topic and method, but Carrie Cracknell’s quiet direction smooths out the nearly three hours of running time. By any means this is not an easy-breezy show to experience, but it sinks into your soul in a way that only an epic does. The problem is that it’s so, so slow and stagnant. 

Julia Rank: London Theatre: In the superb ensemble, there’s a scene-stealing appearance from Christopher Godwin’s Grandpa, who was clearly a hellraiser in his younger days and dreams of arriving in California and bathing in grapes. Greg Hicks imbues Pa with quietly mesmerising gravitas and Succession actor Cherry Jones provides the star casting as the stalwart Ma but doesn’t dominate.

Andrzej Lukowski: TimeOut: 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.

Fiona Mountford: inews: In almost three hours of playing time the lighting barely shifts from a state of Stygian gloom, as the Joad family make their way from their tenant farm in Oklahoma to what they hope will be the sun-drenched promised land of California, a place dripping with milk and honey. Herein lies the wellspring of Cracknell and Gulati’s power: they imbue the narrative with the fever dream quality of a Biblical pilgrimage, ensuring we understand that while this story is absolutely about the three generations of the Joad family plus assorted hangers-on, it is simultaneously a tale with universal resonance.

Dave Fargnoli: The Stage: Cherry Jones provides an indomitable moral and emotional core to her extended family as matriarch Ma. She makes clear the constant hard work Ma puts into maintaining optimism, skilfully revealing hints of grief or vulnerability that she deliberately smothers with kindness and generosity. Her interactions with Mirren Mack’s fragile Rose of Sharon are quietly heartbreaking, full of an unspoken understanding that tragedy is always near.

Alun Hood: WhatsOnStage: Reducing a 600-page novel down to three hours stage time is an ambitious undertaking, but Galati has done a creditable job. While certain characters and plot developments have been excised, the sense of humans being tested to the limits of their endurance remains potent, as does a sense of wonder at the sheer scale of an America that can elevate or crush individuals, and where the dividing line between getting by and total despair is easily crossed.

Dominic Maxwell: The Times: Moment by moment, it’s handsomely done. There’s a splash about in a pool, a nifty camp set, a barn dance. Yet while Alex Eales’s restrained set design is elegant, all this lamplight can drag you down. Characters don’t leap out of the gloom, and there is precious little humour to help to frame all the sadness.

The Grapes of Wrath runs at The National Theatre until 14 September.

Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith

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