An African-American cast, a decade-later timeframe, and a hit-packed ’60s R&B soundtrack revitalize William Inge’s 1953 classic Picnic in John Farmanesh-Bocca’s ground-breaking new intimate revival for Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.

Monti D. Washington burns up the stage as Hal, a hot-and-sexy college football star turned ne’er-do-well drifter whose arrival in a sleepy Kansas town shakes up local lives like they’ve never been shaken up before, in particular those of single mom Flo Owens (Yolanda Snowball) and her two daughters, beautiful eighteen-year-old Madge (Mattie Harris Lowe), and brainy fifteen-year-old Millie (Symphony Canady).

Also finding their lives transformed for better or for worse over a single twenty-four period are spinster schoolmarm Rosemary (Sydney A. Mason), desperate to marry out-of-town businessman Howard (Derrick Parker); elderly neighbor lady Mrs. Potts (Rosemary Thomas), who can’t take her eyes off the shirtless hunk she has just hired to do yard work in exchange for breakfast; and perhaps most importantly where Madge is concerned, her young businessman boyfriend Alan (Ahkei Togun), initially overjoyed, then not so pleased that his former college roommate now sees him as his only hope of securing a steady job.

What Hal hasn’t counted on is meeting Madge.

Still waters run deep indeed in the characters Inge has created, whether it is Mrs. Potts, chained for life to a mother from hell yet still longing for all she’s missed out on in life, or Rosemary, who has seen herself go seemingly overnight from eighteen to forty and can’t bear the thought of another year of hopeless singlehood, or Alan, whose all-American goodness may harbor a darker side if you dig just a bit beneath the surface.

As for the Owens clan, Flo’s cheery maternal warmth masks fears about what lies ahead for her two daughters. Millie may be acing all her tests, but it’s no fun living in the shadow of a beautiful older sister. As for Madge, the older Owen girl may be all pretty perfection on the outside, but good looks have their downsides, especially in mid-20th-century Middle America where a young woman’s only future lay in marriage.

Perhaps most complex and conflicted of all is Hal, blessed with movie star looks and a sports-and-physical labor-cultivated torso but cursed with a wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing and some just plain bad luck, a recipe for trouble if there ever was one where women are concerned.

Family vs. freedom, love vs. duty, beauty vs. brains, and the loneliness that life choices can bring. All of these themes make Picnic the great, if sadly all-too-unsung play it has been for the last seventy years, and never more so than as resituated by director Farmanesh-Bocca in a time and place when interracial communities were few and far between.

Indeed, so right do his revelatory casting choices feel that you might easily assume Inge to be a Black author writing specifically about the Black experience in the American Midwest.

Washington’s hot and hunky Hal, Lowe’s lovely-as-all-get-out Madge, Snowball’s warm and wise Flo, Canady’s outwardly feisty, inwardly fragile Millie, and Togun’s too-good-to-be-true Alan redefine Inge’s characters to indelible effect.

Rising L.A. stage star Mason is simply sensational as the desperate-to-wed Rosemary alongside all-around splendid supporting turns delivered by Parker as her rib-ticklingly reluctant beau, Thomas as the still vital Mrs. Potts, Erika L. Holmes and Caitlin O’Grady as Rosemary’s fun-loving fellow schoolteachers Irma and Christine, and Rogelio Douglas III as spunky paper boy Bomber.

 Add to this sound designers Farmanesh-Bocca, Jeff Gardner, and Adam Phelan’s soul-classic-spiced musical soundtrack (just right for a delightful dance sequence choreographed by Farmanesh-Bocca and Brianna Price) and you’ve got a Picnic like none before it.

Frederica Nascimento’s effectively scaled-down set features a pair of neighboring houses on either side of a gorgeous framed Great Plains vista painted by scenic artist Chris Bell, a scenic design stunningly lit by Chu-Hsuan Chang as are Mylette Nora’s period-evoking costumes and Jenine MacDonald’s just-right props.

 Lowe and O’Grady alternate as Madge and Christine. Terrance Stewart is stage manager and Andrew Blahak is assistant stage manager.  Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Though I’d likely be singing the praises of any well-directed, well-acted Picnic revival (I love Inge’s play that much!), there’s something particularly special about John Farmanesh-Bocca’s revolutionary restaging of a classic. At seventy years of age, Picnic has never felt so fresh and new.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.odysseytheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 24, 2023
Photos: Jenny Graham

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, William Inge