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Well now. The community theater season has definitely, undeniably begun. The Hampton Theatre Company, celebrating its 25th year, has mounted an impressive and absorbing production of William Inge’s 1953 capturing of Midwestern angst, “Picnic.” It was a good choice.
Anyone with a TV or a DVD player or a sense of romance has undoubtedly experienced the movie version with William Holden, Kim Novak and Rosalind Russell.
Good flick. Nice music. But Inge wrote “Picnic” for the stage, and it’s on the stage that it comes most fully to life, in all its three-act depth and dimension. Though “Picnic” buzzes along on its comic surface, it’s the undercurrent of sadness and discontent, of dreams shattered, deferred, or tainted that gives it substance.
Every one of the eight major characters carries some pain or vulnerability to hurt beneath a deceptively simple and bouncy exterior. And the power of “Picnic” resides in the masterly way Inge unveils each of these hidden darknesses. Though he never achieved the exalted status of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee, with whom he shared a particular point in time, his thoroughgoing understanding of his medium and his ability to construct situations and characters that tug at the heart as well as the mind will forever secure his place among the major American playwrights.
On opening night, one of the audience members mused aloud, “I’d forgotten what a good play ‘Picnic’ is.” Of course, the production aided his evaluation mightily. First, it’s splendid looking. James Ewing and Sean Marbury are carrying on the tradition that the late Peter Marbury and Mr. Ewing established with elegantly, realistically detailed sets that add authenticity down to the smallest detail. And Sebastian Paczynski lights this with impressive, moody variety and sensitivity, except for one brief scene, in which a monster moon is hung in the sky, which has the effect of turning reality into cartoondom. But this passes, and the acting under the impossible moon counteracts its presence with taste and talent.
As always, Teresa LeBrun’s costumes are beautifully period realized.
The Hampton Theatre Company has instituted, within the last few years, a practice of inserting an Equity actor or two into its casts. There are three professionals in “Picnic,” and they’re all terrific. But so are the non-Equity members. In fact, director George A Loizides has knit together one of the most effective and spirited ensembles the HTC has ever put on a stage.
Mr. Loizides has a fine sense of stage pictures, constant, original and motivated movement, and an unerring sense of pace and sensitivity that moves the evening along at a brisk but tender clip.
The casting is unerringly on target. Westhampton Beach eighth-grader Marc Cotter is delightful in a small role as Bomber, a young paper boy whose humor and appreciation of feminine beauty are in development.
Jessica Howard and Lara Bowen are two country schoolteachers and town gossips down to their fingertips. Pam Kern is solidly stolid as Flo Owens, the single mother who tries valiantly to bring up her two inspired daughters rightly and as rigidly as they’ll allow. Diana Marbury is unfailingly droll as Flo’s neighbor, and she counterbalances Flo by showing far more interest in making real connections with the rest of the world and its inhabitants.
Nicholas Yenson is effective as Alan Seymour, the very straight-edge beau of the most beautiful girl in town and the fraternity brother of the stranger who manages to stir up the heretofore placid emotional waters of a small Kansas town. Paul Bolger is rotundly genial, romantic, and frightened as Howard Bevans, the suitor of Rosemary Sydney, the old maid teacher who boards in the Owens house.
As Rosemary, Frances Sherman lines out a character more subtly haunted by the passage of time and youth than Rosalind Russell in the film. And she conveys tellingly the tragedy of the desperation that middle age without an anchor can wreak on a woman. Her scene with the drifter is a fevered and touching one.
Catherine Cusick is a stick thin, marvelously multifaceted and achingly sensitive Millie Owens, a profoundly bright and confused teenager, who is, in her way, wiser than the adults she has to endure. She, along with her older sister Madge, develops from child to the brink of womanhood as the play progresses, and Ms. Cusick makes it all real and tangible.
The two main characters, developed most fully by the playwright, are Hal Carter (Justin Sease) and Madge Owens (Rachael McOwen.) Mr. Sease is erotically electric as the mysterious and loquacious traveler who appears without invitation in the morning of the preparations for a town picnic. His sensuality is palpable and his scenes with Madge have an energy of the flesh that is as magnetic as it is basic and earthy.
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