Stoneham Packs an Unsatisfying 'Picnic'

"Picnic"

Written by William Inge; directed by Caitlin Lowans; production stage manager, L. Arkansas Light; scenic designer, Charlie Morgan; costume designer, Seth Bodie; lighting designer, Christopher Ostrom; sound designer, David Wilson

Cast in alphabetical order:

Irma Kronkite, Leigh Barrett; Bomber Guetzl, Scott Coffey; Mrs. Potts, Lisa Foley; Millie Owens, Emily Graham-Handley; Hal Carter, Aidan Kane; Madge Owens, Delilah Kistler; Howard Bevans, Craig Mathers; Flo Owens, Dee Nelson; Rosemary Sydney, Sarah Newhouse; Alan Seymour, Ben Sloane; Christine Schoenwalder, Meredith Stypinski

Performances: Show has ended; next is Strangers on a Train, May 7-24, Stoneham Theatre, 395 Main Street, Stoneham, Mass.
Tickets: 781-279-2200 or www.stonehamtheatre.org

When William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Picnic first opened on Broadway in 1953, its searing treatment of women's repressed sexual desires unleashed by the appearance of a rugged, handsome drifter no doubt shocked post World War II Eisenhower era audiences. Today, this nostalgic piece of rustic Kansas Americana can seem melodramatic and hopelessly out of date if its themes of alienation, desperation, and unfulfilled dreams are not treated with poignancy and unselfconscious realism.

The recent Stoneham Theatre production, which ended its brief run on April 19, has the small-town look but not the wistful feel of Inge's bucolic, last-chance romance. The clapboard houses, neighboring back porches, weathered picket fence and modest homespun dresses effectively bring us back to a simpler place and time, but modern posturing and edgy mannerisms often create a barrier between the audience and the melancholy material. Not seeming to trust that the play's old-fashioned sentiments can still resonate in today's more sophisticated culture, director Caitlin Lowans has paced her production on fast forward. Bulldozing over the play's quieter, more contemplative moments, Lowans and her cast have done the exact opposite of what I'm sure they intended: they have made Picnic seem dusty instead of timeless.

In Picnic, the boarding house of the abandoned wife and mother Flo Owens is the gathering place for several unmarried resident schoolteachers, the widowed neighbor Mrs. Potts, Flo's two daughters Madge (the pretty one) and Millie (the smart one), Madge's conservative boyfriend and recent college graduate Alan, and the sweaty, unrefined young laborer named Hal whom Mrs. Potts has hired to do chores around her male deprived homestead. Hal, it turns out, was once Alan's frat buddy, an underprivileged but talented athlete who gave up his football scholarship to put his good looks to work in Hollywood. Having failed to make it on the silver screen, he's now in search of a job with the oil company Alan's father owns.

I t doesn't take long for heat to develop between Hal and Madge. Both judged primarily on their superficially stunning appearances, they find in each other deeper feelings and bigger aspirations. Their obvious attraction sparks jealousy, concern, fantasies, and buried longings in all around them, most notably in Madge's mother who wants a better life for her daughter than she has had for herself. Also prodded into action by Hal's incendiary appearance is old maid schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney who decides once and for all that this is the last Labor Day she'll spend as an unmarried good-time girl to middle-aged salesman Howard Bevans. Motivated by lust in the air and a bit of Jack Daniels on the sly, she takes her cue from the younger duo and boldly declares her emancipation from spinsterhood. In Sydney we see the wasted life that Madge so urgently wants to avoid.

Soap opera hunk Aidan Kane (All My Children and As the World Turns) as Hal is an appropriately tall and well sculpted drink of water whose shirtless strutting sets aflutter the hearts of every woman planning to attend the annual Labor Day Picnic. Likewise Delilah Kistler as the 18-year-old Madge is a blonde, ivory skinned, voluptuous beauty. When the time comes for them to be more than what everyone sees, however, they lack the layers of pain, intimacy, and desperate yearning that should ignite their passions and make their unlikely connection believable. Their climactic romantic denouement is loud and hurried, turning what should be a long, luxurious, sensual awakening into an awkward and unsatisfying emotional quickie.

Sarah Newhouse as Rosemary Sydney also rides roughshod over her more vulnerable moments, turning her frustrated belle of the ball into a bit of a harridan. She's a little too tough, a little too brittle, and a little too confident to earn the necessary sympathy when her bullying turns to pleading. A shade more eccentric loneliness beneath the aging party girl would have made her quiet dissolution much more powerful.

As Sydney's paramour Howard Bevans, Craig Mathers is just the right combination of middle-aged Peter Pan and bewildered dime store playboy. Ben Sloane as the affable good guy Alan is a sincerely adoring if unexciting friend and beau. Lisa Foley as Mrs. Potts captures the humor but lacks the requisite salt-of-the-earth warmth of her well-meaning buttinsky, and Dee Nelson as Flo maintains too passive an interest for a mother hell bent on having her beautiful daughter marry well. As tomboy intellect Millie, a too lovely Emily Graham-Handley overdoes the gangly awkwardness and sullen attitude, obscuring her artistic sensitivity and making her rebellion much too contemporary.

Without a very clear sense of period and total commitment to the mores of a conformist and repressive era, this Picnic never finds its heart. More faith and less posturing would make Inge's sad yet hopeful material seem relevant even in these post-feminist and anti-hero worship times.

PHOTOS: Emily Graham-Handley as Millie Owens, Sarah Newhouse as Rosemary Sydney, Delilah Kistler as Madge Owens, Aidan Kane as Hal Carter, Craig Mathers as Howard Bevans, and Lisa Foley as Mrs. Potts; Delilah Kistler and Aidan Kane; Craig Mathers and Sarah Newhouse