Theater review: A pleasant 'Picnic' at Palo Alto Players Theater review: A pleasant 'Picnic' at Palo Alto Players (November 17, 2004)

By Bryan Wiggin

Special to the Almanac

William Inge's play "Picnic" won the Pulitzer Prize and several other prestigious awards in 1953. It's being given a production by Palo Alto Players that is solid and worth seeing, if not completely satisfying.

The setting is a back yard shared by Flo Owens (Rori Welling) and Helen Potts (Julie Masterson) in a small Kansas town in 1952. These two are widowed, and all their friends are spinster schoolteachers, including Rosemary Sydney, who rents a room in Flo's house.

These women are all dry tinder, and when Helen hires a handsome drifter named Hal to do some odd jobs, the spark is struck. For us to believe in the spark, the actor playing Hal has got to have the goods -- specifically, a natural, animal sex appeal. Adam Ottley has it.

He spends most of the first scene with his shirt off, and Mr. Ottley has a physique that makes watching him easy. He has a handsome face that still holds some innocence, and he moves with the unselfconsciousness of an animal.

His acting ranges from the clumsy good intentions and desperate braggadocio of a man who feels his life is sinking, to tender longing when he falls in love with Flo's daughter Madge (Halsey Varady). It's a good performance.

The picnic of the title is an annual Labor Day fest, which everyone attends. Hal was supposed to escort Madge's brainy, ugly-duckling younger sister Millie (Christine Lida Sliva), but he and Madge borrow the car of Hal's old fraternity buddy Alan Seymour and drive off for a celebration of their own.

Alan (Adam R.T. Currier) is the rich kid in town, and Flo is lobbying for his marriage to Madge. But Alan knows what Hal and Madge have been up to, and tells the police that Hal stole his car.

Hal has to hop a freight to Tulsa, and he begs Madge to go with him. He'll be working for a friend as a bellhop, but he holds out bright dreams of the life that he and Madge can build together.

Everyone discourages her from following him, but she does. Her mother predicts that Hal will be a drinker and a philanderer, but Madge says you don't love people because they're perfect -- which is a good thing, or where would most of us be?

Rosemary has been seduced into spending the picnic night with longtime beau Howard Bevans (David Lischinsky), and in the morning she demands that he marry her. He replies that he won't marry a woman who doesn't say "please," and Rosemary breaks down in a desperate moaning of "Please, Howard, marry me."

As Rosemary, Jackie O'Keefe makes this the most intense moment in the show. She also has the second most intense: when her frustrated longing for the young stallion, Hal, drives her into a vicious tirade denouncing him as a bum.

Regrettably, the show, in general, is a little short on intensity. While the actors aren't merely walking through their parts, they are not living them with the fervor of people who have a lot on the line. Flo's begging of Madge not to leave, for example, just isn't desperate enough; and Flo's defense of her decision is also under-heated.

Director Vickie Rozell, with several good productions to her credit, needs to squeeze more passion out of her cast. Everyone is well-rehearsed, the action moves well, and the applause at the end was obviously sincere -- mine included -- for a job generally well done. But there's not enough heat; the actors don't care enough, and thus we don't care enough about them. And the final tableau, of Flo sitting forlornly on a tree stump, is far too abrupt.

There is a beautifully evocative set from Ron Gaparinetti, and skillful lighting from Michael Palumbo.
INFORMATION

"Picnic," by William Inge, is being presented by Palo Alto Players at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto through November 21. For information, call 329-0891, or visit paplayers.org.

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