• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
April 20, 2024 10:00 am

The Grapes of Wrath: Ricky Ian Gordon’s Opera Deserves a Real Run

By Sandy MacDonald

MasterVoices revives their 2010 concert staging of this opera version of the Steinbeck novel

Christian Pursell, Mikaela Bennett, Schyler Vargas. Photo: Toby Tenenbaum


It’s no accident of synchronicity that on the day that the New York Times ran a background piece about migrant workers encamped year-round in the woods of the Hamptons, the choral group MasterVoices presented a one-night revival of Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera The Grapes of Wrath, reprising the work they introduced to New York audiences in 2010.

Translations of Deuteronomy 15:11 abound, but in essence it says: “There will always be poor people in the land, Therefore I command you to be openhanded …”

MasterVoices artistic director Ted Sperling co-conceived and again conducted the semi-staged revival of this staggering piece, with some minor emendations and additions to Michael Korie’s concise and moving libretto. 

The opera is based on John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel about the massive westward migration precipitated by the Dust Bowl disaster. Tens of thousands of tenant farmers were forced off their blighted lands. You may remember the book from high school as a dense, weighty tome, ending in a scene guaranteed to shock an adolescent’s sensibility. It was rendered here with soul-scouring passion by Mikaela Bennett as “Rose of Sharon” Joad.

It falls mostly to matriarch Ma Joad (Margaret Lattimore, resplendent of voice and stamina) to carry the emotional and physical load of the family’s fraught journey West. Exhausted, starving, they finally reach California’s promised land only to discover that foremen have been instructed to burn bumper crops in order to boost prices. “Shoot!” says Winfield, the youngest Joad (Gordon Henry, very natural). “If they just gonna waste ’em … Why can’t we tek’ em?”

Good question. Eldest son Noah – described as “a calm and puzzled-looking man who seldom spoke” – takes it upon himself to relieve the strain on the family larder. Christian Pursell sings this devastating soliloquy exquisitely. If you’re left dry-eyed, you are perhaps utterly devoid of empathy.

Tom Joad (Kyle Oliver) is ripe for radicalizing, and a “burnt out holy-roller” turned strike leader (Schyler Vargas, superb in several variegated roles) is the one to push him over the edge, saying: “Why not attack the need instead of the needy?”

In the interest of condensation, actors J. Smith Cameron and Joe Morton served as narrators, linking – and sometimes pre-encapsulating – the scenes enacted along the lip of the stage. In the background, a chorus some two-hundred strong sit ready to add reinforcement, beneath an array of vintage photographs smartly curated by Wendell K. Harrington.

While attesting to the authenticity of the historical record, the imagery also adds a frisson of immediacy. This same crisis can be seen all around us, daily: Only the identities of the underprivileged suffering at the bottom of the food chain have changed. 

The Grapes of Wrath was presented for one performance on April 17, 2024 at Carnegie Hall. Information: mastervoices.org

About Sandy MacDonald

Sandy MacDonald started as an editor and translator (French, Spanish, Italian) at TDR: The Drama Review in 1969 and went on to help launch the journals Performance and Scripts for Joe Papp at the Public Theater. In 2003, she began covering New England theater for The Boston Globe and TheaterMania. In 2007, she returned to New York, where she has written for The New York Times, TDF Stages, Time Out New York, and other publications and has served four terms as a Drama Desk nominator. Her website is www.sandymacdonald.com.

Primary Sidebar

Creditors: Strindberg Updated, For Better and Worse

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith star in Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's classic drama.

Creditors: Love, Marriage, and Maddening Mind Games

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★☆☆ Ian Rickson directs the rarely performed Strindberg work, with a refresh from playwright Jen Silverman

Goddess: A Myth-Making, Magical New Musical

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ A luminous Amber Iman casts a spell in an ambitious Kenya-set show at the Public Theater

Lights Out, Nat King Cole: Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Dule Hill plays the title role in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor's play with music, exploring Nat King Cole's troubled psyche.

CRITICS' PICKS

Dead Outlaw: Rip-Roarin’ Musical Hits the Bull’s-Eye

★★★★★ David Yazbek’s brashly macabre tuner features Andrew Durand as a real-life desperado, wanted dead and alive

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.