Word: film
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...GRAPES OF WRATH. This adaptation of John Steinbeck's landmark novel is everything that Broadway shows typically are not: political, conscience- stricken, expansive (the cast numbers 35) and epic. Much more realistic than the inspirational Henry Fonda film, the production by Chicago's Steppenwolf Company is flawed, sometimes slow, but deeply, achingly honest...
KONBIT!: BURNING RHYTHMS OF HAITI (A&M). Twelve scorchers from the turbulent Caribbean isle, assembled by film director Jonathan Demme. The record's a strong political gesture (most of the tunes have a social conscience that's both chilling and chillin') and the season's most salubrious rhythm assault...
...after two years of developmental productions, Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe has finally succeeded in adapting his epic tale for the stage. The best measure of this portrait of a family in agony and dissolution is that it is actually better -- less sentimental and truer -- than the landmark 1940 film version...
...clearest instances of this newfound grit are the two most famous speeches. When Lois Smith, giving the finest performance of a great stage career, says as Ma Joad that she knows "the people" will endure, she offers none of the reassuring faith of Jane Darwell in the film. Her words are instead the hollow attempt of a frightened peasant to calm herself and to reassure a son she expects never to see again. When Gary Sinise as Tom Joad tells her that wherever people are organizing for freedom and a better day, he will be there, he does not ooze...
Director Howard Davies, who staged Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Broadway, is British and, perhaps as a result, the accents are from Mars. Otherwise there is nothing to fault, from William Dudley's pillow-strewn, louvered-door set to Mark Henderson's offstage fireworks. Film veteran Charles Durning brings beguiling malice to Big Daddy, capturing the crass vitality of this aging self-made entrepreneur, while Polly Holliday, Flo on CBS-TV's erstwhile Alice, is all fluttering and giggles and connivance as his soon-to-be widow...