Octavio Solis takes ‘Wrath’ down a new ‘Road’

The cast of Octavio Solis’ Mother Road, a 21st-century tale inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, at Berkeley Rep through July 21. Photo by Kevin Berne

If you google the most efficient route from Salinas to Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the majority of your 25-hour drive would be on I-40 heading east. But playwright Octavio Solis isn’t remotely interested in the fastest way to get from one place to another. Being a dramatist, he’s naturally interested in the most dramatic way, but there’s another, more powerful force at work in his Mother Road, a sequel of sorts to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

A world premiere in 2019 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a commission from the National Steinbeck Center, Mother Road takes its name from Steinbeck’s description of Route 66 in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel about Oklahoma immigrants fleeing the terror and destruction of the Dust Bowl and aiming for the so-called promised land of California.

“Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield—over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys. 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land … and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”

The cast of Mother Road includes (from left) Emilio Garcia-Sanchez, Lindsay Rico, James Carpenter and Courtney Walsh. Photo by Kevin Berne

In Solis’ present-day continuation of the story, now on stage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, the Joad family’s journey happens in reverse. The last surviving Oklahoma Joad, William (a wily, wiry James Carpenter), has a fatal cancer diagnosis and wants to leave his 2,000-acre farm in Sallisaw to a blood relative. After much investigating by his loyal lawyer (and the closest he’ll ever get to a son), a distant relative is located.

Martín Jodes, a Mexican-American farmworker in California, turns out to be the great-grandson of Tom Joad (who is the first cousin of William, if you’re tracking the family tree from Steinbeck to Solis). As the next of kin, he would be the one to inherit the land, but from their first meeting, Will and Martín (Emilio Garcia-Sanchez) do not click. This is the first of many examples Solis provides of the collision of past and present, bigotry and belligerence.

For reasons only a playwright could love, Will and Martín decide to drive from California to Oklahoma on Route 66 in Martín’s beat-up old Dodge pickup, which he calls Cesar. A fair amount of the play takes place on the road, and Berkeley Rep’s scenic department, led by set designer Tanya Orellana, has done a beautiful job creating a believable vehicle (just look at the exhaust coming out of the tailpipe) that simulates the motion of the road through Cha See’s lights and the turntable in the floor of the stage.

Emilio Garcia-Sanchez (left) is Martín Jodes and James Carpenter is William Joad in Mother Road. Photo by Kevin Berne

This epic road trip, as any good student of road trip stories already knows, will see Martín and Will bond and fight and bond some more. It will see them encounter racists who want to call the police because there’s a Mexican with a white guy. It will, in true Wrath fashion, see violent law enforcement meet with violent response. And, in what may be the play’s most interesting and least believably rendered aspect, we’ll see these two actual family members create a sort of family of vagabonds who complete their spiritual journey of joining past and present.

The first of these vagabonds is Martín’s pal Mo, a Chicana lesbian from Fresno, who brings a welcome, unpredictable energy to the road trip. As played by Lindsay Rico, Mo is hilarious, tough and tender. She’s going to be the foreperson on Martín’s new farm, and though he has his deep and abiding issues surrounding the land and his legacy, once we meet Mo, we want the farm to be successful simply because she’s in charge.

Out of a New Mexico snowstorm we meet James (Brandon Davon Lindsay), a former addict from Martín’s past who has gone deep into the spirit and poetry of Mother Nature. He’s kind of an opaque, mumbly character, but he’s a grounded counterpart to Mo’s live wire.

There are more to come, but with each new passenger, the relationship is less well defined. And that’s true of the journey itself as it gets closer to its destination. We see flashbacks and meet ghosts and trip over past resentments, and all the while, the focus on Martín and Will blurs. There’s more poetry than reality in this story, but events of Act 2 strain even the most generous suspension of disbelief.

Reality is emphasized less here by director David Mendizábal in favor of magical realism that has this tale spinning out in a realm of folklore and poetry. There’s an actual chorus that speaks in lyrical flights and even sings (music by Ritmos Topicosmos) about mile marker after mile marker rolling by. But for me, that didn’t add anything other than a reminder that this is a theater piece with few rules. When Martín delivers his version of Tom Joad’s famous “I’ll be there” speech (“Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…”), I found myself hyper-aware of the call back to the novel (and Henry Fonda in the 1940 movie), so its emotional impact evaded me. Also, the moment it’s recited is particularly fraught and seems so unlikely as to be almost silly.

By the end of this road trip, I have to say I admired Mother Road more than I liked it. To even attempt bringing a revered 85-year-old work of fiction into the modern world with beauty and grit and poetry is a bold, brave move. It’s impressive, but for me, not moving in the way I hoped it would be. It was about the journey much more than the destination.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Octavio Solis’ Mother Road continues through July 21 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes (including one 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $25-$134 (subject to change). Call 510-647-2949 or visit berkeleyrep.org.