OF GRAPES AND NUTS
The Players have scaled comic heights before. Their Glass Mendacity was the most devastating send-up of Tennessee Williams since his last four plays, and All My Spite reduced Arthur Miller to an hour-long gut buster. But with Of Grapes and Nuts, a surefire satire on Steinbeck, they’ve struck the mother lode of comedy. Few shows nowadays–on Wells Street or off–can choke a crowd on its own laughter. This one had audience members, even sober critics, gasping for air. Fortunately the guffaws drowned out the sound of Steinbeck rolling in his grave.
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The authors’ note hints at what to expect: “The characters, locations, and story line depicted in this play are not intended to represent . . . the works of certain famous American authors, either living or dead, especially those who are dead but are survived by a spouse who may be short on a sense of humor but long on legal representation.” Of Grapes and Nuts (written by ensemble members Doug Armstrong, Keith Cooper, and Tom Willmorth) crushes two Great American Classics, The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, into one hilarious parody. Steinbeck’s easy emoting, corn-pone rhetoric, hayseed aphorisms, heavy symbols, and rhapsodic speechifying that turns characters into bullhorns are all grist for a merciless mill. At the same time this production is richly reverent: you can taste the Players’ gratitude for the straight lines they so deftly deflate.
Tom encounters the defrocked reverend, Jim Casy, formerly “your average tongue-speakin’, bush-burnin’, tent-packin’, bread-breakin’, grape juice-pourin’ crackpot fer Jesus.” Casy is no longer baptizing souls in the irrigation canal, at an average of 44 per minute–there was just too much temptation: “Their souls was all hopped up with the glory of the meetin’ one minute, the next minute we’re out back in the grass doin’ the Gomorrah.”
Curly is lonely (her industrial-strength hair scares most men), so she makes a play for Lenny; they do a slam dance that does her in. To save the union from scandal, Tom must send Lenny to that rabbit farm in the sky–but the big lug’s a lot like Rasputin. Finally Tom takes off after making his Big Speech: “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. Hidin’ in the bushes, but I’ll be there.” Cynical Ma has the last word: “I give him a week.”
