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2nd Story’s redeeming Picnic
BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
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Picnic
By William Inge. Directed by Ed Shea. With Lara Hakeem, Tim White, Carol Schlink, Gabby Sherba, Pam Faulkner, Marg Cappelli, Jim Sullivan, John Palumbo, Paula Faber, and Monique Shaghalian. At 2nd Story Theatre through August 15.
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William Inge’s 1953 Picnic didn’t win a Pulitzer for its careful punctuation. When inhabited, it shoves onto the stage issues left unspoken in polite Eisenhower-era American parlors. About sex, mainly. As a 2nd Story Theatre production makes clear, Inge saw small-town Midwestern life as seething below the surface. Harnessed as a power source, repressed sexuality could have been the mid-20th-century’s ethanol. The actions of just about everyone in this play are controlled by their sex lives — past, present, or prospective. There’s not a lot of thoughtful volition going on; everyone seems tugged and shoved by impulses and urgencies that rise from beneath opaque surfaces, gathering momentum to breech. We sit like whale-watchers, waiting to glimpse explosive celebration or despair. Drifting back to his home town is Hal Carter (Tim White), a classic American bad boy ne’er-do-well. He’s been in jail for stealing a motorcycle and owns just the sweaty shirt on his back. But he is bare-chested when we first see him, doing odd jobs in the yard of Mrs. Potts (Pam Faulkner). The womenfolk around are ogling him like boys staring at a Marilyn Monroe calendar. (Director Ed Shea has fun stopping a giggling conversation among three schoolteachers when Hal strolls in, all sweaty six-pack abs. Smiles drop. Long pause. Air sizzles.) The inevitable target for his louche charm is heartthrob Madge Owens (Lara Hakeem). Inge offers the simplistic contrast between the beautiful 18-year-old Madge, who couldn’t study her way out of a movie magazine, and her plain but smart sister Millie (Gabby Sherba), who has gotten a full college scholarship. This production rounds out the characters, though, as Hakeem gives the beauty a thoughtful earnestness, while Sherba makes the sister attractively full of life. The picnic of the title, a symbol of community coming together, is taking place on Labor Day, a time for new beginnings as the sisters plan to go back to school the next day. But this is taking place near railroad tracks, from which freight train-riding Hal arrived that morning and on which he is bound to depart sooner or later. The parents of this town can’t protect their offspring from the lonesome, siren call of the train whistle any more than they can keep them from puberty. To urge Madge away from temptation, the playwright has to provide something besides common sense and Mama’s misgivings. So boyfriend Alan Seymour (Ryan Maxwell) is on hand. Doting on Madge, he’s from the country club set, the polite fever dream that any Mrs. Owens (Carol Schlink) would wish for a daughter in this period. (Mrs. Potts is a missus in name only, her version of Hal having left town as soon as he’d done his marriage-certificate duty.) Complicating things nicely, Alan is a friend of Hal. They were fraternity brothers before Hal — in college only because of a football scholarship — dropped out to tramp around the country. This play paints pictures of several kinds of female oppression and social plight. One situation that’s, fortunately, only minimally played for laughs is that of middle-aged schoolteacher Rosemary Sidney. Marg Cappelli teams up nicely with Jim Sullivan, who plays long-time beau Howard Bevans. Rosemary’s nearly hysterical desperation as she begs Howard to not leave her an unmarried old maid is beautifully balanced, rescued from schmaltz, by Sullivan with a blend of sympathy and Dense Guy insensitivity. (Howard later bringing her a "bouquet" of hydrangea, obviously snatched from a bush, is an inspired touch.) As usual, most of the acting here is on the money. Hakeem and White shed sparks in the kissing scenes but also smolder between clinches. At one point, as a mother losing a daughter, Schlink can break our hearts with her exclamation. In what should be an incidental role — horny, trash-talking paperboy Bomber — John Palumbo flips from lecherous to yearning in a heartbeat. Occasionally they rush their lines — in 2nd Story’s trademark breakneck style — when the meaning warrants slowing down, but for the most part this play is like watching graceful speed skaters. For all the playwright’s risky sexual themes and his sympathy to the plight of women, Inge does reveal himself to be a typical white middle-class classist. Those of low morals, in his terms, are recruited from ranks of the poor and non-Wasp. Arch-loser Hal couldn’t make it into college without the brawn to get a sports scholarship, and a shorthand way to characterize a loose-woman schoolmate of Madge was to name her Juanita. But Picnic more than redeems itself. Between Inge and 2nd Story Theatre, we start out and remain in good hands.
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