BWW Previews: D'Arco, Novak Lead Circle's PICNIC Cast

Gina D'Arco and Taylor Novak will lead the cast of William Inge's Picnic, in a revival of the classic play helmed by Jeffrey Ellis, for Nashville's Circle Players, which this season celebrates its 65th year of bringing live theater to audiences throughout Middle Tennessee. Picnic will run March 27 through April 4, and will be performed at the theater at Hillsboro High School.

D'Arco, whose most recent roles include Mary Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life and the title role of Sabrina Fair, both for Springhouse Theatre Company, will play Madge Owens, the beautiful young woman who finds herself captivated by the charming drifter Hal Carter, played by Novak. Novak has played Biff Loman in Death of a Salesman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts and Gabe in Pretty Hurts: The Musical for BLEND Theatrics.

Kaul Bluestone, one of Nashville's most revered actresses, returns to the stage for the first time since her last collaboration with Ellis for the award-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo, to take on the role of Flo Owens, Madge's world-weary and over-protective mother. Cast as Millie Owens, Flo's younger tomboyish daughter is McKenna Harrington, a student at University School of Nashville. Bluestone's resume includes Maggie in Dancing at Lughnasa, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and Madame de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Harrington has extensive credits in film and television and has appeared onstage in such productions as Our Town, Gospel at Colonus, 13 the Musical, Brighton Beach Memoirs and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Austin Olive, a graduate of Carson-Newman University who will be playing a lead role in ACT 1's Fifth of July, is cast as Alan Seymour, Madge's boyfriend and erstwhile fraternity brother of the wayward Hal. He most recently played Harry Houdini in Ragtime for Circle Players. Cat Arnold, cast as Rosemary Sidney, has recently appeared in Legally Blonde the Musical, Shrek the Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, Lend Me A Tenor, Rumors and Much Ado About Nothing. Tom Clouse makes his Circle Players debut in the role of Howard Bevans.

Tammy Sutherland, most recently onstage in Anna in the Tropics and Sordid Lives for ACT 1 and in A Southern Belle Primer for Ted Swindley Productions, will play Helen Potts, Flo's next door neighbor and confidante. Connor Hall, a Lexington, Kentucky, native who was seen in Murfreesboro Little Theater's Hamlet, will play Bomber. Longtime Nashville actress Judy Jackson is cast as Irma Kronkite, with Rebekah Stogner as Christine Schoenwalder and Laura Simmons as Alvah Jackson.

William Inge's Picnic opened at The Music Box Theatre in New York City in 1953. The play is set in a small Kansas town on Labor Day. Rosemary, the spinster school teacher fears she will continue to live her life without someone to take care of her. In an interview at the time, Inge recalled the genesis of the character of Rosemary: "When I was a boy in Kansas, my mother had a boarding house. There were three women school teachers living in the house. I was four years old and they were nice to me; I liked them. I saw their attempts and, even as a child, I sensed every woman's failure. I began to sense the sorrow and the emptiness in their lives and it touched me."

Inge studied at Nashville's George Peabody School for Teachers in the late 1930s. Picnic won Inge (who also wrote Bus Stop, Come Back Little Sheba, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, among other plays) the Pulitzer Prize, The Drama Critic Circle Award, The Outer Circle Award, and The Theatre Club Award.

The show's director, Ellis, is senior contributing editor for BroadwayWorld and is a Nashville-based writer, editor and critic. He has covered the performing arts in Tennessee for more than 25 years. He is the recipient of the Tennessee Theatre Association's Distinguished Service Award for his coverage of theatre in the Volunteer State and was the founding editor/publisher of Stages, the Tennessee Onstage Monthly. He is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and is the founder/executive producer of The First Night Honors, held during Labor Day Weekend, which honor outstanding theater artists in Tennessee in recognition of their lifetime achievements and includes The First Night Star Awards and the Most Promising Actors. Further, Ellis directed the Nashville premieres of La Cage Aux Folles, The Last Night of Ballyhoo and An American Daughter, as well as award-winning productions of Damn Yankees, Company, Gypsy and The Rocky Horror Show, with Ellis honored by The Tennessean as best director of a musical for both Company and Rocky Horror. He is a 2013 First Night Honoree.

Picnic is produced by Vickie Bailey, Ramona Richards and Andie Sanders, with Emily Faith as production stage manager. Jacob Street is design director for the production. Lauri Gregoire, who has been resident choreographer at Boiler Room Theater, a First Night Honors producer and is owner of Bellevue Dance Center, will choreograph.

Bailey and Sanders are both associate producers of The First Night Honors. Bailey directed the award-winning A Few Good Men for Lakewood Theater and is has coached forensics in Metro Nashville schools and in Nashville Dioscese parochial schools. Sanders was Ellis' assistant director for The Rocky Horror Show and associate producer for the Circle Gala; currently, she is an event planner/coordinator in the Nashville area. Richards has produced several of Ellis' earlier productions, including Company, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Damn Yankees and Gypsy.

Faith and Street are both graduates of the burgeoning theater program at Lipscomb University and Faith was a 2014 First Night Most Promising Actor.

Since graduation in 2013 with a BFA in Acting and Directing, Faith has stage managed multiple productions for such companies as Blackbird Theatre, Actors Bridge Ensemble, and the National Association for Music Education Conference's production of Tarzan, which starred Broadway's very own Eden Espinosa. Emily has also been seen on stage most recently in Actors Bridge Ensemble's production of 100 Saints You Should Know and Circle Player's production of Rabbit Hole. She is currently a teaching artist for the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's "Disney Musicals in Schools" for which she will direct The Lion King later this spring.

Street's design career since his graduation from Lipscomb has resulted in his work on several productions over the past year and a half, including Street Theatre Company's production of Carrie the Musical, assistant set designer for Disney Theatrical's Tarzan, Vanderbilt Opera's Into The Woods and Die Fledermaus, and set designer for Circle Player's production of Next to Normal. Most recently, he was production stage manager for Circle Players' Ragtime.

For ticket information and other details, go to www.circleplayers.net.

Pictured (at top): Taylor Novak is Hal Carter in William Inge's Picnic