Information for The Grapes of Wrath at Lyttelton (National Theatre), West End (Play). The epic story of the Joads journey across America is both a moving family saga and an extraordinary evocation of rural life during the Great Depression. Returning home from prison after killing a man in a drunken brawl, Tom Joad finds his family about to join the great exodus from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Like thousands of others, the Joads have their farm repossessed by the bank after the crops fail yet again. Now, three generations of the Joad family are left with no choice but to pile all their worldly goods onto a broken down truck and head west on Route 66, refugees in their own country. Held together by their indomitable matriarch, Ma Joad, they make for California, lured by tales of unlimited work and prosperity amidst the fruit groves and vineyards. Instead, their hopes and dreams - and lives - are shattered by what they find. Steinbeck s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is one of the greatest celebrations of the dignity and the endurance of the human spirit ever written. Famously filmed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Tom.