THE GRAPES OF WRATH
I’m just thinking that $500,000 is a lot of money.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Except it isn’t. Especially not in this case, the story in this case being The Grapes of Wrath–John Steinbeck’s tale of the Joad family, landless and desperate, making its way from Oklahoma to California during the dust-bowl calamity of the 1930s, hoping for a new start but finding only a more permanent landlessness and a greater despair.
Still, maybe it’s worth the price–in money and queasy alliances (“Steinbeck. Steppenwolf. AT&T,” say the ads. “An historic collaboration”)–to get The Grapes of Wrath done, especially done by Frank Galati, definitely one of the best directors in the city; an artist with an exquisite hand and a good, strong heart.
This show is a huge and ambitious endeavor. It would be huge and ambitious even without the rivers and the cars and the cast of 42. It would be huge and ambitious even without AT&T and $500,000. That’s because the novel itself is huge and ambitious. Also grandiose and sprawling and pissed off. Also poetic and opinionated, even mystical.
