The play begins in darkness and silence.
Then, cap on head, in jeans and boots, the narrator, Xavier Simonin, hands in his pockets, recounts the disastrous effects of “dust storms”, sandstorms which dry out the green meadows and harm the crops.
The warm lights of Bertrand Couderc then illuminate the stage of the Théâtre Michel, covered with bales of straw, wooden boxes, kerosene lamps, cans and crockery.
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We are in the 1930s, against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
Tom Joad released from Oklahoma prison for good behavior, he killed a man with a shovel.
He joins his family, but things have changed.
Real estate developers are forcing farmers off their land.
Dejected, they resign themselves to looking for work in California, announced as the promised land.
Ma, Tom's mother, dreams of a white house surrounded by orange trees.
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Three years of waiting
But the road is long, arduous and strewn with pitfalls.
Travelers are considered dangerous outlaws.
“You're not yourself when you're piled into a car all alone on a road.
We are no longer alive
,” laments a character.
The wind of anger roars.
Xavier Simonin embodies all the characters like a leader to old-fashioned American tunes.
Musical director of the show, Jean-Jacques Milteau is happily served by three remarkable singing artists imbued with “American roots music”: two guitarists, Claire Nivard and Glenn Arzel and a double bassist, Stephen Harrison.
It took Xavier Simonin three years of patience to obtain the agreement of John Steinbeck's rights holders and to artfully adapt his masterpiece for the theater:
The Grapes
of
Wrath
, Pulitzer Prize) of which John Ford shot the famous film with Henry Fonda (1940).
This stubborn person successfully created the piece at the Off d'Avignon in 2021, he revived it the following year before finally staging it in Paris.
In an hour and a half, he manages to immerse us in a road movie which restores a world gone by for the benefit of industrialization.
We become attached to these poor Okies (residents of Oklahoma) who are looking for a job to survive.
The scenes of the reunion between Ma and her son, the departure from the farm, where they spent their lives, or the death of the grandfather are moving.
Xavier Simonin wanted
to “restore this story of yesterday which resonates today as an omen for tomorrow”
.
He succeeds.
Without ever falling into miserabilism.
On the contrary, a glimmer of hope arises when you least expect it.
The actor and director had already teamed up with Jean-Jacques Milteau in 2011 to transpose on stage another great novel,
L'Or
, by Blaise Cendrars.
The Grapes of Wrath
, at the Théâtre Michel (Paris 8th), until April 28.
www.theatre-michel.fr