Lost in the dust A halting Grapes of Wrath BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The Grapes of Wrath Adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by John Steinbeck. Directed by Bryna Wortman. With Joe Short, Jordon Eastwood, Erin M. Olson, Nicholas Foehr, Gillienne Nadeau, Joe Kidawski, and Marcus Stacy. At URI Theatre through October 23.

Some canvases are too vast to be reduced to stage-size without coming up with precious miniatures. John Steinbeck required the scope and length of a novel to capture the Great Depression in his 1939 The Grapes of Wrath. Half a century later, Frank Galati’s adaptation provided a surprisingly skillful outline of the conflicts and raging undercurrents of the epic tale.

The compelling account does come through in a halting production by URI Theatre, an experience like watching in fascination through TV static as a story emerges. A performance here and there hits just the right note to still resound for us after the curtain has fallen.

The migration of the "Okies," specifically the Joad family, from Dust Bowl Oklahoma to the Promised Land of California represents the plight of the poor in America nationwide in the ’30s. The Biblical dimensions of the situation could not be exaggerated. Projections above the stage show towering, roiling dust clouds, and farmhouses and equipment half-buried in the aftermath. The scale of the social injustice had similar dimensions, the play informs us, as perhaps 300,000 immigrants, lured by heavy advertising, brought such a glut of workers to groves and fields that they could be paid mere pennies an hour.

Tom Joad (Joe Short) is no pushover. He shows up just in time to join his family on the exodus, paroled from prison for killing a man who stabbed him in a bar fight. Straight-talking Pa Joad (Nicholas Foehr) and big-hearted Ma Joad (Erin M. Olson) are joined by a raft of relatives, such as the pregnant Rose of Sharon (Gillienne Nadeau) and her promises-promises husband Connie Rivers (Joe Kidawski).

There is many a powerful moment in this story. The Joads’ hope of traveling 2000 miles to find work is deflated when they come across a scoffing man (Marcus Stacy) on his way back to Oklahoma "to starve all at once." He tells how he lost his family out there because jobs were far scarce and growers played the hungry against the hungrier in order to pay them less. Once in California, the family flees a Hooverville one step ahead of vigilantes and their deputized henchmen who are coming to burn them out, since people who stay in one place tend to organize. Of course, the shameful American history of conflating Communism with labor organizing is made clear with brutal examples.

This isn’t agitprop, so we do get some relief from recurring injustices. The Joads stay a while in a government camp for migrant workers, though even then we get a rant from a Jesus lady who objects to jigs rather than hymns in the community hall. And we get affirmation as well as condemnation. The play concludes with a starkly potent image, as the hitherto weak and self-centered Rose of Sharon does what she can to save a dying man.

Short warms into the role of Tom, who is often a straight man in crucial exchanges with the ex-preacher Jim Casy (Jordon Eastwood). The self-described sinner has lost his faith in any god, but he increasingly develops faith in the "big soul" he speaks of, a bigger self of collective, persevering humanity. It’s crucial that Eastwood convince us of the man’s sincerity, and he does, as Olson does continually as Ma, whom adversity shows to be as resilient as the land itself.

There are some stories that are too heroic for words, where words can get in the way. John Steinbeck nailed the challenge on his third attempt at a novel, finally finding in his hardscrabble characters more Woody Guthries than op-ed writers. Yet even the celebrated 1940 movie couldn’t resist the barn-size target of sentimentality that some of the speeches supplied. It took Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Theatre to understate the heroism and put some fear and trembling into Gary Sinise’s brave talk as Tom, some disquiet into Lois Smith’s bravura as Ma. That 1988 production, which memorably went to Broadway two years later, was adapted and developed by director Frank Galati, who mined the novel for quieter moments that John Ford never located for Henry Fonda.

As well as such unsurmounted hurdles, this production is weakened by a halting pace, with lulls where nothing happens on stage, no tension between characters, no person whose reaction we can’t tear our eyes from.

There ought to be a moratorium on certain plays being attempted in college productions. Just as the gravitas of King Lear is too much for even most professional theater companies, so too the hard-won messages of The Grapes of Wrath require minimal aging in actors before being decanted for us.