Real people, real burdens in Infamous Commonwealth's 'Grapes of Wrath'
THEATER REVIEW: "The Grapes of Wrath" ★★1/2 Through May 24 at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.; Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes; Tickets: $20 at 312-458-9780 and www.infamouscommonwealth.org. Starring Stephen Dunn (Jim Casy) and Wes Clark (Tom Joad).
Recessions are relative. Despite that eye-popping 8.9 percent U.S. unemployment rate, it’s probably fair to say that most folks aren’t in the same kind of hell as the Dust Bowl refugees whose struggle for survival makes up John Steinbeck ’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
But as I immersed myself in Genevieve Thompson’ s intensely heartfelt revival of Frank Galati’ s stage version of this iconic American novel, I was struck by one moment in particular. “The land is all empty,” says one of the sad-eyed inhabitants of the wind-swept Plains. “I gotta go where the folks are going.” In Steinbeck’s story, that emptiness was rural and agrarian. These days, someone from say, Flint, Mich., might say the same thing. The big problem now in parts of the Midwest is the emptying of cities.
This Infamous Commonwealth Theatre production is one of those only-in-Chicago nights of theater. By that, I mean you get a cast of 19 committed actors toiling away in a rented theater, inside a converted supermarket, with all of 60 seats. Ponder the economics of that, while remembering that it’s not about the economics.
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