Welcome to Oklahoma . . . and California.
Not the Rodgers & Hammerstein version of Oklahoma, where corn flourishes and grows as high as an elephant's eye, or where farmers and cowboys attempt to be friends by happily riding off to a box social in a white-fringed surrey. Not the Oklahoma filled with the excitement of America's Westward expansion.And not the California of golden beaches and lush, fertile farmland.
No, this is John Steinbeck's starkly realistic look at the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the Great Depression.
The only thing growing in these cornfields is dust.
Some people today might wonder if a 52-year-old novel about homeless migrants is still relevant.
Well, just last week, there was an item from one of the Deseret News wire services about several Midwest families losing their diary farms to bankruptcy.
And the homeless?
Just look around.
Salt Lake City has its share.
And three weeks ago, I was in downtown San Francisco - a city that, at one time, was touted as the Paris of America's Promised Land.
Today, within eyeshot of Sak's Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, packing the narrow sidewalks around the busy Market-and-Powell cable car turnaround, there are hundreds of homeless begging for handouts from the tourists queueing up for their rides on the cable cars.
Steinbeck is no longer with us, but the way he captured the heart and soul of one of the nation's most shameful eras has been brought dramatically to life on the stage in Frank Galati's brilliant adaptation.
It was Galati's version, staged by the Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago, that won two well-deserved Tony Awards during it's brief Broadway run two years ago. Now, Pioneer Theatre Company Artistic Director Charles Morey - taking a real risk in opening his 1991-92 season by going completely against the traditional grain - has assembled a stunning cast. Several of the leading performers are from the original Broadway production.
This cast is truly remarkable. Not just the leads, but the entire ensemble.
Conan McCarty, as the hot-headed Tom Joad, just paroled from prison for killing a man, and Lois Markle as Ma, forever-optimistic and the glue that binds the Joads together, give finely honed performances.
Gene Pack and Jean Roberts are wonderful, too, as Grampa and Granma, a feisty couple who are reluctant to leave the land they've farmed for so many years.
Craig Wroe is also terrific as crusty ex-minister Jim Casy. His glory-singin' days are long spent on liquor and women, and when the family asks him to say grace over their simple dinner, he carries on about no longer being able to pray.
Other notable performances are given by Raymond Hoskins as Noah, Dave Jensen as Uncle John, Charlotte Scott Guyette as Rose of Sharon, and Myk Watford as Connie Rivers, Rose's husband.
George Maxwell's first-rate scenery - filling the stage with weathered barnwood and rusty tin roofing material, dilapidated shacks, railroad boxcars, even the dramatic thunderstorm and reproduction of the Colorado river with real water - is a visual masterpiece. The production's crowning glory has to be the old Hudson Super Six truck, loaded down with pots, pans, tarps and a dozen Okies heading out across 2,000 miles of mud, mountains and desert en route to the fabled Promised Land of California.
The exceptional lighting, the authentic 1930s costumes and the soulful music by Karl E. Hass, Elizabeth Novak and Michael Smith, respectively, added immeasurably to the overall production.
This is not a happy trip. There are trials and tribulations, illness and death, moments of warmth and times when tempers flare.
While the overall tone is depressing, there is also considerable humor (the fuss over Granpa's burial being, ironically, one of the funniest sequences), and the production does end on a ray of hope.
- A WORD OF WARNING - If you don't like profanity, you might be a little uncomfortable with this show. The Joads were typical Oklahoma farm folks, given to spouting earthy language. And Steinbeck, as anyone who's read him knows, had an equally earthy writing style. Galati maintains the integrity of Steinbeck's classic book - and the dialogue is sprinkled liberally with plenty of down-home cusswords.
But it's nothing patently offensive, just good, honest realism.
I would not be afraid of bringing any junior high or high school-age children to "The Grapes of Wrath." In fact, I would hope that students by the busload be given the opportunity to see Steinbeck's portrait of life in the Dust Bowl.
This is a show that deserves to be seen - not just by adults, but by schoolchildren, too.
Thank you, Charles Morey, for opening PTC's season with this stirring, stunning piece of theater.
Like all really good theater, it will not be soon forgotten.
- OH, WOE IS ME - A short, but very sincere, apology to visiting Equity actor Craig Wroe, who was last seen at PTC in its acclaimed production of "Dracula." In our advance announcement of "The Grapes of Wrath" in last Sunday's Deseret News Arts section, I spelled his name Craig Woe. It was a really dumb mistake, and I'm sorry, Craig.
- AND A REMINDER that a photographic tribute to Salt Lake City's homeless by Katherine Durrans is being featured in Pioneer Memorial Theatre's mezzanine-level Loge Gallery concurrently with the run of "The Grapes of Wrath."
The sepia-toned photographs are thought-provoking.
This dramatic show is open to the public weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday mornings at no charge, as well as to theatergoers during intermissions of the stage production.