Community theater actors come in a number of types. There are the classical amateurs, who can memorize their lines and speak them loudly and clearly, still a step above many of us but without much art. There are the painful over-actors, whose version of performance is to put on a booming voice and spend their still moments posing and their walking scenes strutting.

And then there are those with real skill, who can turn in a believable performance without overwrought histrionics.

All three paradigms are on full display in the Lakewood Playhouse production of The Grapes of Wrath. Based on John Steinbeck's novel, and adapted for stage by Frank Galati, Grapes tells of the family Joad, a clan of displaced sharecroppers who pile into the family truck to follow news of work in the orchards and vineyards of California.

Emotions run high on the severely overloaded vehicle as a full 13 family and friends cross from Oklahoma through the western half of the country. This great migration provides Lakewood further opportunity to experiment with their thrust stage – a theater with seating on three sides of the action rather than the typical one.

Rather than simply position the actors to be optimally visible from all sides, director Marcus Walker heaps the family onto a rolling facsimile of the truck for the travel scenes, and simulates their long drive by wheeling about the space (under power of stagehand) - twisting the action and dialogue this way and that throughout.

The cast of Grapes of Wrath is large, and well stocked with a broad range of acting skill levels. The production is largely tied together by two performances. Samatha Camp's Ma Joad runs a wide gauntlet of emotion, through joy, despair, frustration, hope and rage - all bubbling through cracks in a thin crust of stoicism. Hers is the will that holds the family together through all their trials.

Gabriel McClelland turns in a similarly understated performance as parolee son Tom. Though fueled by occasional outbursts of anger, McClelland's Tom espouses much of the story's philosophy in a quiet, thoughtful voice.

It would be easy to belt out Tom's most famous speech - "Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there ..." - as a fiery manifesto, inspirational strings swelling behind him. Instead, McClelland speaks these lines as they are: a young man talking to his mother after a hard day.

These two, and a few others, struggle to keep viewers in the story, as the mood is repeatedly broken by scene changing musical numbers which are mediocre at best, and the shouting, strutting and posing overwrought performance of Tim Takechi as Tom's younger brother, Al Joad - who steals every scene he can, but in exactly the wrong way.

Believability is further stretched by the costume and makeup. It does not jump right out at first, until a minor character comments on how dirty and unpleasant the Joads look. At this point the audience's attention is brought firmly onto the fact that no one is dirty or disheveled. This is a family crammed into an open air truck, traveling from dust bowl to desert to mountains to coast, with barely money enough for food - and every one comes through the experience neat and clean.

Steinbeck's story is one that can speak to any era of economic hardship, including our own. But in this production the message seems forced and weak as it attempts to break through in the form of a few isolated performances, wading through a large ensemble of mediocrity.

Grapes of Wrath

Through June 20, 8 p.m. Friday- Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $14-$24
Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd. SW, Lakewood
253.588.0042