Review: PICNIC at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble

The irony within the title of William Inge's PICNIC is considerable. Yes, the central event of Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winner is indeed a much-anticipated Labor Day picnic in a small Kansas town for which everyone prepares. But it's a festivity which several key characters end up skipping and we never actually see it take place. If you tunnel deeply into Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of post-war American dreams and values, it is abundantly clear that, to the playwright, life henceforward will be no picnic. Not for the prettiest girl in town; not for the spinster schoolmarm; and most decidedly not for the sexy drifter who has endless braggadocio where his promise used to be.

John Farmanesh-Bocca, who is directing the revival of PICNIC for the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, has noted that he is drawn to the play's examination of American identity and its many contradictions. Given Farmanesh-Bocca's highly inventive and dynamic treatments of Shakespearean and Greek classics with his Not Man Apart Ensemble, a play in which ordinary folks are full of dreams but stuck by their circumstances seems a curious enticement. Like Millie Owens and her older sister Madge both of whom get excited and hopeful whenever they hear a train whistle signaling another journey to a more exciting place, one might logically expect Farmanesh-Bocca to have more interest in a tale set wherever that train is heading. Or, since the PICNIC train only goes as far as Tulsa, perhaps where the next train after that is bound.

But no. Sleepy Kansas it is and this production of Inge's play (also a 1955 movie) has its moments while consistently delivering the longing, the dissatisfaction and, yes, also the sensuality that PICNIC offers up. That the Odyssey production has an all-Black cast might have been more interesting had the director chosen to actually do something more arresting with this configuration or in any way frame the play for a different context. He doesn't. PICNIC is written in 1953 and set in a small Kansas town. The program indicates that the setting of the Odyssey production is the 1960s although nothing about the staging (such as Mylette Nora's costumes or Frederica Nascimento's scenery) would indicate that we're in a more progressive era. It might otherwise be a tricky buy-in to accept that a Black family like Alan Seymour's (played by Ahkei Togun) are among the wealthiest people in the region. Or that Madge Owens ("the pretty one") or Millie Owens ("the smart one") could anticipate a hopeful future anywhere close to home no matter how exceptional they are or how well they marry. Millie (Symphony Canady) dreams of one day getting to New York where - having escaped from her family, especially Madge - she might finally get some actual attention.

In the present, however, it's Labor Day, on the eve of a picnic and a newcomer has everyone in a lather. Onetime high school football star Hal Carter (Monti D. Washington) has arrived to visit his former fraternity friend, Alan. In need of a new start in life, (and money) Hal picks up some work from Miss Helen Potts (Rosemary Thomas), the Owens' next door neighbor who has been known to treat needy strangers with kindness. This extends to swaggering, sweaty rogues like Hal who does his chores shirtless. Especially rogues like Hal. Alan has helped Hal escape scrapes in the past and is happy to help him again, but when sparks fly between Hal and Madge - who is Alan's girlfriend - things get complicated.

In casting Washington, Farmanesh-Bocca has landed on a Hal who is fittingly bigger than life. Tall and ripped with a bravado that suggests he knows only too well the effect he has on the ladies, the actor gives Mal a mix of hot seductiveness and danger; the man is very clearly all kinds of trouble. It's a harder sell to accept that he and Togun's rich kid Seymour ever ran in the same circles. But when this Hall purports to having been an actor, a football player, a diver or a blue collar laborer, Washington is sly enough to make us believe it might all have been true.

Whether Madge buys the act is immaterial. She and Hal, both stuck and with no vision of any kind of future, share a sympatico (to say nothing of hormones). Even more desperate than these two is Rosemary Sydney (Sydney A. Mason) the spinster schoolteacher who views the attentions of her storekeeper Beau Howard Bevan (Derrick Parker) as her last hope for companionship and a better life.

The post-picnic scenes between Parker and Mason are shot through with discomfort (his) and desperation (hers) as the two get liquored up and Parker's once carefree Howard realizes that what he thought was a casual fling is anything but to Rosemary. Mason, who in early scenes gives Rosemary a prim and snobby air, loses her composure completely when she senses that Howard is headed home possibly never to return.

Hal and Madge's reckoning is charged, albeit in a different way. In the early scenes we watch as Madge is gently bullied by her mother to cook, sew, show off her beauty and generally do all the things that demonstrate what a perfect country club wife she will eventually make Alan. Caitlin O'Grady (who alternates in the role with Mattie Harris Lowe) gives off several indications that Madge is reaching a boiling point. When she and Washington do connect (at one point she vaults dangerously off the porch into his arms) , they do so with some real heat.

Lust cools as picnics end and consequences lead to practical questions. The train that earlier promised passage to so many better places will return and it will carry one or more people away. The cast of this PICNIC have ably done their work, thereby assuring that it matters to us - as it did to Inge - where these ordinary folks are going and what they will do when they get there.

PICNIC plays through May 28 at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A.

Photo of Monti D. Washington and Caitlin O'Grady by Jenny Graham