The Grapes of Wrath, now on stage at the Cort Theatre, is a virtuoso display of naturalism: a rickety Hudson is frantically packed by many hands and is seen to carry the dispossessed farmers from Oklahoma to California; people bathe in a river; changing hours of day and night are softly suggested. These fluid tableaux alternate with frozen tableaux: folks line up for a saying of grace or to contemplate with rapturous awe the first sight of the promised land of California. Kevin Rigdon’s scenery and lighting show a craft in full bloom.

The play, as the oddly worded credits would have it, is “based on the novel by John Steinbeck, adapted and directed by Frank Galati” The production is by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and it breathes a spirit of earnest communalism: in the program, the players are listed alphabetically, and on the stage, a busy democracy of attention prevails—actors say their piece centerstage and scamper quickly upstage or offstage. There are genuflections toward “epic” theater in the nudging voice of the narrator and in the sporadic appearance—stage left—of balladeers, both of which underline the play’s didactic points.

This strenuous egalitariamsm does not obscure the excellence of certain individual performances.

This strenuous egalitariamsm does not obscure the excellence of certain individual performances. Both Lois Smith (Ma Joad) and Gary Sinise (Tom Joad) have found ways around even their worst lines: they impersonate energetic people bustling about and briskly, negligently, offhandedly mouthing the awful Steinbeck