Review: THE GRAPES OF WRATH at The Arts Asylum

In 1939, “The Grapes of Wrath,” a book by the journalist and author John Steinbeck, stood the nation on its ear with its heart-rending tale of the family Joad and their struggle just to eat.  Their homeland had become a Dust Bowl.

A new production of the 1990 award winning stage adaption of “Grapes” by Frank Galati plays now through November 19 at the new Arts Asylum in the lower level theater of their new facility at 824 E Meyer Boulevard in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City.  The play won the 1990 Tony Award for Best New Play.

This independent production is the product of a four and a half year passion project by Director Ryan Fortney. The staging strives to examine what the producers believe to be a new modern relevance to the text while honoring its storied history. It is meant as a redefining vision for “The Grapes of Wrath.”

The multi-racial casting of this production could never have existed in the 1930s time period when this story is set.  Many states promulgated laws outlawing marriage between couples of different races. The Supreme Court decided in 1967 that these kinds of laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees to equal protection in their decision: Loving versus Virginia.

This iteration is played without scenery on a black stage with few props other than those that can be carried and placed onto the stage.  The audience is asked to imagine the Joad’s travels across the southwestern United States.  

The cast includes Sherri Roulette-Mosley as Ma Joad, Robert Coppage III as Tom Joad, Matthew Emmerick as Jim Casy, Tim Ahlenius as Pa, Elaine Clifford as Rose of Sharon,  Michael Juncker as Uncle John, Jen Benkert as Al, Terrace Wyatt Jr. as Connie, Briana Marxen-McCollom as Noah, Arthur Clifford as the narrator, Tehreem Chaudhry as Muley, and John VanWinkle as Grampa.

 “The Grapes of Wrath” (named for a lyric in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) burst upon the national consciousness in 1939.  The book was immediately banned (beginning here in Kansas City and in Kern County California) by agricultural interests feeling they had been unfairly represented in the story.  They labeled the book a Communist trope.  In fact, the script makes multiple references to a “Red” scare. The Soviet Union and its Communist Party ended three years after the first appearance of Galati’s play which makes the “Red” references a little oblique to today’s audience.

 While the abuses of desperate Midwestern immigrants that Steinbeck references ended after the beginning of World War II, the abuses just shifted to another ethnic group in the same area.  They are a pre-cursor to the founding of the National Farm Workers Union in 1962 by Caesar Chavez.  In many ways, the abuse of migrant workers continues even today in the central valley of California.   

In the year after publication in 1939, “Grapes” sold 430,000 copies.  The controversy and book banning was serious enough that the author took to being always armed in public.  The banning of the book in libraries ended in 1941.

By the end of 1940, “Grapes” became a feature film directed by John Ford.   Ford earned an Academy Award.   Steinbeck won the National Book Award.  This version surfaced as a play in 1988 before a Broadway run in 1990. 

It now seems difficult to imagine how extreme the 1929 stock market crash coupled with the prolonged drought in the decade that followed must have been.  It affected most of Kansas and the entirety of Oklahoma and northern Texas.  Howling winds, damaging farming practices, and temporary climate change forced thousands of poor farmers off their sharecropped farms and sent them west.  These poor people literally set out for California looking for greener pastures. All their possessions were strapped to whatever vehicle they owned and they made their way west.  That is the beginning point for “The Grapes of Wrath.”

John Steinbeck was a third generation Californian from the agricultural central coast area of the state.  He came from a family that seems to have been fairly well off.  Steinbeck’s Father was the Treasurer of Monterey County.  His Mother was a teacher.  He attended Stanford University (but did not graduate) in the early 1920’s.  His thirty-three books emphasize the plight of downtrodden members of society.

Early on, Steinbeck worked many odd jobs and learned the travails of California’s immigrant population.  His first novel “Cup of Gold” was published in 1929 when Steinbeck was only 27 years old.  Although never flush, Steinbeck was fortunate enough to be offered the use of a family cottage near Monterey and an occasional loan that allowed the author to concentrate on his writing.

“Grapes of Wrath” is an extension of a seven-part series of journalistic stories on Migrant Workers by Steinbeck for a San Francisco Newspaper.    

Tom Joad (the story’s protagonist) has been paroled from the Oklahoma State Prison.  He has served four years of a seven-year sentence for a self-defense motivated homicide.  Tom has returned to a multi-generation occupied family sharecropped farm only to find that his people have been evicted.  He finds them at his Uncle’s home nearby.  The Uncle too has been evicted.

Joad’s immediate family (including siblings), his grandparents, pregnant sister and husband, and a former minister named Casy pack up in a single vehicle for the promised land of California over two-lane roads that lived as major arteries long before the Interstate highway system was installed post World War II.  The Joads follow storied U.S. Highway Route 66 from Oklahoma through New Mexico, Arizona, through the Mohave Desert, to the farmland of the central valley of California mainly near Monterey and Salinas and along U.S. Highway 99.

There are glimpses of some very good acting from the major lead characters in this production of “Grapes.”  Some of the lesser characters are forced to double and triple in brass and exactly who everyone is can become confusing. It is, however, worth your time to see this local vision of an American classic.

“The Grapes of Wrath” continues through November 19th.  Tickets can be obtained online at Eventbrite and searching The Grapes of Wrath- Kansas City or by phone at ‪816.945.2316.  

Photos by Ryan Fortney

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