Review: MOTHER ROAD at Berkeley Repertory Theatre

The final production of Berkeley Rep’s 2302024 season is a road show with its main characters travelling from California to Oklahoma in a reverse of the play’s inspiration- The Grapes of Wrath. It’s also a road trip through the heart and mind as they attempt to heal old grievances. Octavio Solis’ oft poetic fantasia soars under the brilliant direction of Berkeley Rep’s Associate Artistic Director David Mendizabal, stunning staging, and an excellent ensemble cast.

Will Joad (James Carpenter) is looking for the last of the Joads, someone to bequeath his beloved farm in Sallisaw Oklahoma before he dies of liver cancer. With the assistance of his lawyer Roger (Michael Moreland Milligan) they’ve found an unlikely heir, a rough and tumble Mexican migrant worker named Martin Jodes (Emilio Garcia-Sanchez). Martin has just jilted his fiancée at the altar after getting in legal trouble, so the offer of a new life seems like a good opportunity. So, the two head off on the road in a beat-up pickup truck, an amazing prop created by scenic designer Tanya Orellana that will play a pivotal role in the production.

Along the road, the two will find they have more in common than they know. Both were abandoned by their fathers and therefore their connections to their lineage. Martin carries around a box of his mother’s ashes and is regretful that he’s born from rape. Will is bitter as well, angry that his father left his mother. Dreams are their shared legacy, which is the land – the remaining pride of the Joad family. A Greek chorus follows the intrepid pair and double as characters they encounter on the journey; an ex-druggie cipher James (Branden Davon Lindsay), an appreciative waitress (Courtney Walsh) and an Okie hating hotel proprietor (Daniel Duque-Estrada).

Lindsay Rico has a juicy comic role as Martin’s friend Mo, a tough lesbian who knows her farming and hops onto the pickup truck. James and a Choctaw farmhand also join the trip back to Oklahoma and the promised land. The earlier Joads of the Grapes of Wrath left the dust bowl and Depression with the hope of a garden of Eden in California, a dream quickly squashed by xenophobia, indentured servitude, and troubles with the law. In Solis’ Mother Road, his misfit collection of broken humanity returns to the promised land.

A family bible Martin’s been carrying becomes a treasure map in a side plot – the treasure being the bones on Will’s grandfather. Martin and Will bond and there’s a frantic race to get the ailing Will home to his beloved land. Tanya Orellana’s set design along with Cha See lighting create the sunsets and brilliant sunlight of the Western states. And there’s that pickup truck that exhales tailpipe smoke and unfolds into a hotel room and a diner table – pretty neat.

Mother Road is an epic fable, not unlike Steinbeck’s inspiration. It’s part gritty reality and poetic cultural homage. Commissioned by the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Solis carries on the legacy of the Joads in a grand fashion. James Carpenter, Emilio Garcia-Sanchez, and Lindsay Rico do their best work here and Mendizabal’s staging works all aspects of Berkeley Rep’s Peet Theatre.

Mother Road continues through July 21st. Tickets available at https://www.berkeleyrep.org/shows/mother-road/ or by calling 510-647-2949.

Photo Credit: Kevin Berne

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