Dan Norman
A man and a woman are sitting on the ground looking in front of a house, at night.
Rasell Holt, left, Alina Taber in a contemplative moment in 'Picnic.'
It is said that the mirror reflects what we see, but teaches us who we truly are.
William Inge’s Picnic, in repertory at American Players Theatre through Sept. 13, is a portrait of mid-century life in a small Midwestern town. The set encompasses the shared backyard of two neighbors, Helen Potts (Dee Dee Batteast) and Flo Owens (Tracy Michelle Arnold), who rents a room to a boarder, Rosemary Sydney (Colleen Madden). All three are single women in midlife, and together they are the planets orbiting around Flo’s two teenage daughters, Madge and Millie (Alina Taber and Kelly Simmons). Madge is the elder sister, the town beauty, and Flo’s main job at the moment is to see her married off to a fine (but boring) young man, Alan (Colin Covert). Madge is not very smart, but she has her looks — for now. It’s clear that good looks are a fleeting gift, not to be wasted looking for perfection in a husband. Madge knows she’s good looking, and she knows that that’s all she has. She’s not smart or talented like her nerdy younger sister, Millie. Millie is resentful of the attention paid to Madge’s radiant beauty —but secretly, Madge is devastatingly jealous of the opportunities that Millie’s intelligence and talents will bring to her life.
The majority of the characters in the play are women — the men in their lives largely absent, either long gone or having never quite arrived. The young women are struggling to come of age, the older ones struggling to find something to make this day different from the last, and the next.
Until a stranger arrives. Hal (Rasell Holt) is “a young vagabond” who appears out of nowhere, full of muscles, charm and secrets. Each of the women sees something different in Hal. He’s interesting, sexy, a bit dangerous. Hal is a skilled shape-shifter, able to take on any form that will help him get an angle towards his quarry — whether that be a place to sleep, a few bucks, or the attention of a pretty girl. What Hal really is is a scam artist, a confidence trickster. His greatest talent is the ability to see at a glance what the other person wants or needs, and to be that person. He reminds Helen and the other women that they still have a spark of sexual desire deep inside their middle aged bodies. He is the cool athletic frat-brother buddy to Alan. He is the tender hearted older-boy life guide to Millie. And he represents everything that Madge thinks she wants from life: adventure, excitement and passion.
William Inge, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1953 for Picnic, based the setting of the play on his own childhood experiences in Kansas, where he lived with his mother, who took in women school teachers as boarders. At the time, female school teachers were typically not allowed to be married. So these women had missed the traditional path of young adulthood, marriage and children. Inge says, “I began to sense the sorrow and the emptiness in their lives, and it touched me.” But all the women in this play (not just the schoolteacher) are living lives of quiet desperation. It seems that there’s just no way for these women to win.
Flo scolds pretty Madge for spending too much time in front of the mirror — even as she celebrates her beauty. Madge replies “It just seems that when I'm looking in the mirror that’s the only way I can prove to myself I’m alive.” But Madge isn’t the only one who needs a mirror to remind themselves that they really exist. Hal, the vagabond, is the mirror that each one of the characters gazes into. The mirror is where the con man gets his power to persuade and obtain what he wants and needs. When we look in the mirror, the image reflected back is what each of us wants to see. But is it real? Or is it just the story we want to tell the world — and ourselves?
Picnic is beautifully directed by APT artistic director Brenda DeVita. The costumes, set, lighting and sound design are perfection. We come to expect this at APT, but we should be reminded to notice. Sound design was particularly engrossing — unseen trains approach and depart, wind chimes chuckle, birds chitter. The magic of APT is that sometimes a soft summer breeze caresses the audience at just the moment it might be called for in the script. Do the set designers control the wind, too? And as the lights go down, we can glance up and see infinity in the stars.
