the company Tomorrow from Dawn takes a strong take on John Steinbeck’s best-seller

A major novel of the 20th century, “The Grapes of Wrath”, by John Steinbeck, precisely deciphers the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States through the exodus of a family of peasants dispossessed from their land. For his theatrical adaptation, director Hugo Roux highlights broken destinies and the powerful text of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

We are in the 1930s, in the United States, in Oklahoma. The economic crisis of 1929 and a series of climatic disasters pushed thousands of ruined peasants onto the roads, heading for California, with the hope of finding work and a better life. Tom Joad, just released from prison, returns to the family farm just as his family are preparing to leave their land. The Joad family then begins a long journey on Route 66, across the great plains of the West. The journey is tough, the dislocation of the family begins.

And California turns out to be far from the imagined Eldorado. Rejected and insulted by the inhabitants of the fantasy country, the Okies, these “boueux” of Oklahoma, exploited by bosses who only think about increasing their profits, will have to fight not only for their survival, but also to maintain their dignity.

The birth of class consciousness

If Hugo Roux chose to adapt John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, it is because this novel published in 1939 carries a powerful breath. It shows how the violence of capitalism modifies men in their most intimate aspects. It also aptly describes the birth of class consciousness and the anger that accompanies it. An anger often singled out as a vulgar feeling which undermines a society based on inequalities.

After The place by Annie Ernaux, then Their children after them, adaptation of Goncourt by Nicolas Mathieu, and this is the third time that the company Tomorrow, at down tackles the adaptation of a novel, in this case a monument of literature. The director, this time again, endeavored to recreate the entirety of the novel, staying as close as possible to the plot. “It’s dense work that I initially carry out alone, explains Hugo Roux. This gives a first version of 6 or 7 hours which we then rework with the actors. We select together the extracts that will remain in the final version.”

Despite the distress and hunger from which the characters in the novel suffer, the director strives to turn on a few lights. Like Man, the mother played by the actress Valérie Blanchon, who never gives up hope and clings to life with dazzling strength. In the deepest darkness, solidarity and emancipatory fury.

A stripped-down scenography

The depth of the story is carried by actors who are often very accurate (Hugues Duchêne, Karl Eberhard) and a sober and stripped-down scenography imagined by Juliette Desproges. It is articulated between two universes: the dry and arid land which occupies half of the space. This land, both a source of work and a harbinger of misfortune and disaster when dried up, is no longer able to feed those who work it. The other part of the decor, resembling a gas station reduced to its simplest expression, serves as a makeshift shelter for the Joad family throughout their journey.

The piece is sufficiently detached from its time to allow any ramblings. It makes wandering and migration universal subjects and resonates with current events. When some cross the Arizona desert at the risk of their lives, leaving corpses in mass graves, others 80 years later cross the Mediterranean in total destitution, forced to abandon the weakest at the bottom of the sea. ‘water. All carried by the same ideal of dignity and better tomorrows.

Full room

When it was released in 1939, the novel Grapes of Wrath immediately causes a scandal as it dehumanizes part of the American population. He is enjoying resounding success. Adapted to the cinema the following year by John Ford, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 and its author the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

The piece presented by the company Tomorrow, at down also met her audience. It was sold out during the first performances in December 2023 and January 2024 at the Théâtre du Léman in Thonon-les-bains and at the Théâtre de Vénisseux.

“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, directed by Hugo Roux

January 25 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. – Théâtre des Collines d’Annecy

February 22 at 8 p.m. and February 23 at 2 p.m. Phénix Scène Nationale de Valenciennes

From July 2 to 21, 2024, Théâtre 11 – Avignon festival