Seeing the glory Monmouth raises Steinbeck's classic BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	The Grapes of Wrath Adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by John Steinbeck. Directed by Jeri Pitcher. Produced by the Theater at Monmouth through August 26. Call (207) 933-9999.

The backdrop for the Theater at Monmouth’s production of The Grapes of Wrath is a simple white screen, wide and rectangular, just like what holds up the movies. As the Joads make their way from dust-bowl Oklahoma to California, the screen receives and arrays the ever-changing colors of dawn and midday, dusk and storm. This is the sky of the American horizon, in all its wide-screen, expectant glory. In its homage to the powers of projection, Monmouth’s exceptional production raises an eloquent revival of the quintessential American gaze.

Nearly 70 years after its publication, Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize-winning epic needs no gimmicks or stylization to affect us. Its most acute appeals — for dignity in work, laws that work for ordinary folks, a sense of spirituality that is inclusive and compassionate — remain disturbingly relevant, and Steinbeck’s language of the Joads, a gravelly poetry of scripture and prairie vernacular, lends itself to being spoken aloud. Frank Galati’s fluid and faithful adaptation was originally produced at the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, and later won Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Script. At beautiful Cumston Hall, Monmouth’s repertory company takes a fine scripting of this majestic American tale and puts it on stage with clarity and feeling.

In true democratic socialist fashion, Monmouth’s Grapes relies on avid ensemble teamwork, under the nuanced direction of Jeri Pitcher. The multi-generational cast of 26 includes the 12 members of the Joad family, 11 ensemble members portraying the world at large, and the three musicians of the Dusty Rambler Band (Stan, Liz, and Carrie Keach, on guitar, mandolin, and fiddle), who provide interludes with their fine bluegrass and spiritual tunes, as a sort of rootsy Greek chorus to the action. This large and diverse assembly of actors — which includes real-life families, local community-theater favorites, and Equity performers both home-grown and imported — is remarkable for its energy, sensitivity, and spirit of rapport.

Steinbeck’s intense characters are raised to Monmouth’s stage in universally superb performances, from the smallest children on up. The core of the Joad clan, Janis Stevens’s magnificent Ma, is tough and bountiful, rawhide and gingham. Her wisdom and sorrows are revealed with a plainness and restraint that bespeak both tautness and modesty, and, in contrast, her peals of happiness have a rousing candor. As her son Tom, a fiery young fellow who has just returned to the family from a stint in jail, Richard Price gives us a wrenching balancing act between his love and his wrath, letting us see that they are two sides of the same idealism. Another particularly deft performance comes from Caroline Hewitt as Tom’s young sister Rose of Sharon, pregnant and wed to a man who turns skittish. Hewitt makes masterful, delicate work of threading girlishness with adult sobriety, foot-stomping indignance with older, more stoic sorrow.

The excellent Mark S. Cartier delights and moves as the sensualist Preacher Casy, who has felt the spirit in unorthodox places — including in the fields, where he loved to love women — and who gave up preaching to do some hard thinking about sin. Casy is the voice of some of the most radical thoughts of Steinbeck’s epic, arousing humanist ideas about sin, virtue, and law, and Cartier’s face and tones do well in conveying both the ebullience and the weight of these thoughts. "Maybe there ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue," goes one of his famous reflections. "There’s just stuff people do." And: "Why do we have to hang it on Jesus? Maybe it’s all men and all women we love."

As for those men and those women, the people among whom the Joads pass, Monmouth’s ensemble gives them intricate expressions and gestures. There is nearly always a quiet array of intimate goings-on happening onstage around the main action — women cooing over babes, men fiddling with car parts and fires, children rocking dolls and singing to themselves. The unprepossessing realism of the ensemble actors lends this production a texture of uncommonly subtle and human richness.

Marty C. Lynch’s set is simple and graceful and utterly suited for the tale. Against that ever-changing screen of a firmament is one dark line of far-away landscape, and the predominant feature of the sparse working set is a movable car filled with furniture, blankets, and Joads. Lynne Chase’s gorgeous light plot simulates the corner of a barn window penetrated by moonlight, the lines of Ma’s lantern made large when she raises it, the reflections of sun off water when they reach Colorado.

The folks on the road along and to this glory often find amusement and communion in their simple cultural comforts — storytelling, dancing to a fiddle at nightfall. In just such a spirit is Monmouth’s Grapes a haven and a relief as much as it is a reminder of America’s continuing ailments. In this production’s skill, empathy, and scope, you’ll find the reassuring balm of what our culture can create. Fiery, far-reaching, and elegantly plain, it is a vision of what America looks to when it thinks to look up. ^