New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
The great wine press of the wrath of God
PAUL DONOVAN admires a brave attempt to stage John Steinbeck’s epic tale of poverty-stricken 1930s America
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
ANA ISABEL NUNES points to the empowering legacy of Augusto Boal’s Theatre Of The Oppressed
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE review Cottontail, Memoir of a Snail, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and Captain America: Brave New World
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by an account of the long history of Catholic Church’s involvement in espionage
ROGER McKENZIE welcomes an important contribution to the history of Africa, telling the story in its own right rather than in relation to Europeans
The Grapes of Wrath
National Theatre
IT is a very difficult task to adapt John Steinbeck’s brilliant 1939 book, the Grapes of Wrath, for the stage. It is a brave dramatic act to even try, let alone achieve.
This attempt at the National Theatre, using Frank Galati’s adaptation, makes a great effort, encapsulating many of the moods of desperation and defiance of adversity, but whether it totally gets there is open to question.
More from this author
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
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PETER MASON is moved by a striking production of Noel Streatfeild’s enduringly popular children’s book
WILL STONE gets a little lost in a play about memory that misremembers another production of itself
MARY CONWAY feels the timeliness of Dostoevky’s strange tale of a nihilist who corrupts an imaginary paradise
PAUL DONOVAN salutes a timely dramatisation of Aneurin Bevin's life, and the political struggle on the left to create the NHS