Berkshire Bright Focus...

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Three Continents

From the ship at sea 1

From the ship at sea 2

From the ship at sea 3

From the ship at sea, 4

From the ship at sea, 5

From the ship at sea , 6

From Rio!!

The Trip Home

NEW SHORT STORIES

Nothing There For You

Nothing There For You, 2

Nothing There For You, 3

Nothing There For You, 4

Chase of The Thrill, 1

Chase of the Thrill, 2

Chase of the Thrill, 3

Chase of The Thrill, 4

Of Course, part1

Of Course, part 2

Of Course, part 3

Of Course, concluded

In Memory: Of My Cruise 1

In Memory: Of My Cruise 2

In Memory: Of My Cruise 3

In Memory: Of My Cruise 4

Las Vegas, 1

Las Vegas, 2

Las Vegas, 3

Las Vegas, 4

Las Vegas, concluded

Mad Moment #1

Mad Moment #2

Mad Moment #3

Mad Moment #4

Margaret Never Knows, 1

Margaret Never Knows, 2

Margaret Never Knows, 3

Margaret Never Knows, 4

Margaret Never Knows, 5

Remote, part 1

Remote, part 2

Remote, part 3

Remote, concluded

POETRY

April's Fools

Easter Sunday

...simple answers

And when they come at me

Albany Civic Theater

Appropriate

Barrington Stage 2018

Glass Menagerie

Fall Springs

WellIntentioned White Ppl

BSC's West Side Story

The Chinese Lady

A Doll's House, Part 2

The Cake

Royal Family of Broadway

Typhoid Mary

7th Annual 10 x 10

BSC ARCHIVED REVIEWS

10x102017

10x10 Upstreet Five

10x10 Upstreet2015

10X10 Upstreet 2014

10X10 On North

10X10Upstreet

Absurd Person Singular

Alix Korey

All My Sons

American Son

An Enemy of the People

Art

Bashir Lazhar

The Best of Enemies

The Birds

BNelson's All-Male Revue

Breaking the Code

Brel in the Berkshires

Broadway Bounty Hunter

Butler

Camping with Henry & Tom

Carousel

Celebrating...William Fin

Character Man

The Chosen

Clybourne Park revisited

Company

The Crucible

Dancing Lessons

Dr. Ruth, All the Way

Engagements

The Fantasticks

Fiddler on the Roof

Freud's Last Session

Fyvush Finkel

The Game

Gaslight

Georgie - BSC

Going to St. Ives

The Golem of Havana

Guys and Dolls

His Girl Friday

I Am My Own Wife

Kimberly Akimbo

BSC's Kiss Me, Kate

KT Sullivan: Colored Lts.

Kunstler

A Little More Alive

Lord of the Flies

Lost in Yonkers

Love Letters

Lungs

Man of La Mancha

The Memory Show

Mormons, Mothers...etc.

Much Ado About Nothing

Muckrakers

My Name is Asher Lev

Mysteries of Harris Burdi

The North Pool

On the Town

The Other Place

peerless

The Pirates of Penzance

Presto Change-O

N. Coward's Private Lives

Ragtime

Romance in Hard Times

Scott and Hem. . . .

See How They Run

See Rock City. . .

Shining City

Sleuth

Southern Comfort

Speech & Debate

A Streetcar Named Desire

Sweeney Todd

Taking Steps

This

This Wonderful Life

To Kill a Mockingbird

Tribes

Trumbo

21st...Spelling Bee

Underneath the Lintel

Veils

Vincent

The Violet Hour

The Whipping Man

Working on a Special Day

Zero Hour

Berkshire Fringe Festival

Berkshire Opera Company

Le Nozze di Figaro

La Boheme

Berkshire Opera Festival

Rigoletto

Ariadne auf Naxos

Madama Butterfly

Berkshire Theatre 2018

Naked

SMI Explains It All For Y

The Petrified Forest

Hair

Coming Back Like a Song

Church and State

BTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Anna Christie

BTG Arsenic and Old Lace

At Home at the Zoo

BTF Archive

Babes in Arms

Bells are Ringing

Benefactors

Birthday Boy

The Book Club Play

Brace Yourself

Broadway by the Year

Candida

Candide

The Caretaker

The Cat and The Canary

Cat on a BTG Roof

Cedars

Children of a Lesser God

BTG's A Chorus Line

A Christmas Carol

Christmas Carol 2010

A Class Act

Colonial Christmas Carol

Constellations

Deathtrap at BTG

A Delicate Balance

Design For Living

Dutch Masters

Edith

The Einstein Project

Eleanor: Her Secret Journ

Endgame

Extremities

Faith Healer

Fiorello

Frankie and Johnny in the

The Guardsman

Ghosts

A Hatful of Rain

The Homecoming

Homestead Crossing

In the Mood

K2

The Last Five Years

The Lion in Winter

A Little Night Music

Little Shop at Colonial

Lost Lake

A Lover's Tale

Eric Hill's Macbeth

A Man For All Seasons

Mary and Edith

Million Dollar Quartet

Moonchildren

The Mystery of Irma Vep

Neighbor/Smile

No Wake

Noel Coward in Two Keys

Oklahoma!

Pageant Play

Period of Adjustment

Poe

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue

Puppetmaster of Lodz

Re-View Puppetmaster

Red Remembers

Same Time, Next Year

Sick

The Stone Witch

Sylvia

Thoreau or, Return to Wal

A Thousand Clowns

The Who's Tommy

Waiting for Godot

Bridge Street Theatre

Casse Noisette

Driving Miss Daisy

there is a happiness. . .

Leni

F&J in the Claire De Lune

Bridge St. Thtr Archive

Dream Child

Frankenstein: etc.

Gamma Rays/Marigolds

Holiday Memories

How To Pray

...Kieron and Jade

Lucky Lindy

Redwood Curtain

Souvenir at Bridge St.

The Tavern

Broadway/Off-Broadway

Two Gay Evenings

Three Plays in NYC

Capital Rep

Red Maple

Miss Bennet: Xmas at Pemb

The Royale

Ring of Fire

Blithe Spirit

Paris Time

She Loves Me in Albany

Sex With Strangers

CapRep Mamma Mia!

Assisted Loving

Chester Theatre - 2018

Chester's The Aliens

Mary's Wedding

Disgraced

Bar Mitzvah Boy

Chester Theatre Archive

Almost, Maine

Animals Out of Paper

Chester's Amish Project

Annapurna

Arms On Fire

The Betrothed

Blackbird

blink

Body Awareness

The Dishwashers

Every Brilliant Thing

Folk

The Gospel. . .Discord

I and You

An Iliad

Madagascar

Memory House

The Mountaintop

My Jane

A Number

Oh God

Sister Play

Skeleton Crew

The Swan

Tilted House

Copake Theatre Company

Nine Months

I Do! I Do!

Sour Grapes

Talking Heads

Grace & Glorie

Dorset Theatre Fest 2018

Pride and Prejudice

Skeleton Crew-Dorset

Cry It Out

DORSET ARCHIVED REVIEWS

All in the Timing

American Buffalo

Barefoot in the Park

Baskerville

Boeing-Boeing by Camolett

Christie's The Mousetrap

Clybourne Park

Deathtrap

Dear Elizabeth

Dial "M" For Murder

Downstairs

Fallen Angels

Good People

The Hollow

I Hate Hamlet

Intimate Apparel

June Moon

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar

Legend of Georgia McBride

Marry Me a Little

Mauritius

Merton of the Movies

Murder on the Nile

Noises Off

Out of the City

Outside Mullingar

Red

St. Nicholas

S Holmes & the Jersey Lil

Superior Donuts

Table Manners

Tarnation Russell Colvin

The Novelist

The Pavilion

The Scene

The Way of The World

The Whore and Mr. Moore

A Year with Frog and Toad

Ghent Playhouse 2018/2019

Miracle on South Division

Elves and Shoemaker

The Father

Ghent Playhouse Archives

Ghent's "Almost, Maine"

Ali Baba...4 Tea Thieves

Ayckbourn at Ghent

Belles

Boeing-Boeing GPH

The Boys Next Door

Cabaret in Ghent

Clever Little Lies

Clue: The Musical

Complete Wm Shakespeare

The Countess

Dancing at Lughnasa

Coward's Fallen Angels

Fantasticks

Ghent's "Dial M...."

Grapes of Wrath

Greater Tuna

Hair Loom!

Hay Fever

The Heiress

Heroes in Ghent

House of Dwarfs

The Imaginary Invalid

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jerry's Girls

Lettice and Lovage

Enchanted April

The Little Mermaid. . .

Ghent "Little Shop"

Lost: The Grimm Years

Madwoman of Chaillot

Menagerie A Trois

Mothers and Sons

Mrs. Farnsworth

My Cousin Rachel

O.P.M. at Ghent

Once Upon a Mattress

Ghent: Our Town

Over the River, etc.

Pack of Lies

Picnic

Prisoner/2nd Avenue

Puss in Boots

Rabbit Hole in Ghent

Robin Hood: 50 Shades. .

6 Women...

Ghent's 39 Steps

True West Ghent

The Turn of the Scrooge

The 25th Annual Putnam...

Urinetown

The Weir

You're a Good Man, Charli

Goodspeed Musicals

Drowsy Chaperone CT

GoodspeedOliver!

The Will Rogers Follies

Rags

Thoroughly Modern Musical

Chasing Rainbows

Bye Bye Birdie/Goodspeed

Goodspeed's Anything Goes

Hartford Stage

A Lesson from Aloes

Hubbard Hall

The Velocity of Autumn

Mystery of Edwin Drood

menagerie

Book Club Play

HH - Crucible

Illiad

Tartuffe

Shakespeare's King Lear

Parellel Lives

Ondine

Hubbard Shirley Valentine

Shakespeare's Macbeth

The Drawer Boy

You Can't Take It With Yo

Literature

An Unlikely Hero

Antibes

B ob Dylan

Christmasville

A Lesser Saint

Upstreet, #1

Living Room Theatre

LRTs Three Sisters

MacHaydn Theater-2018

Annie at the Mac

Mac's Wedding Singer

Hunchback of Notre Dame

Machaydn Mamma Mia

Mac-Haydn Cabaret

Funny Girl

Damn Yankees 2018

MACHAYDN ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Mac-Haydn's Addams Family

The All Night Strut

All Shook Up

Annie

Anything Goes

McHs Anything Goes

The Baker's Wife

Beauty and the Beast

Best Little Whorehouse...

Brigadoon

Bye Bye Birdie

Carousel at the Mac

Chicago

Chicago (2016)

Chorus Line

Crazy For You

Damn Yankees

Dirty Rot. Scoundrels

Dreamcoat

Drowsy Chaperone in Chath

Fair Lady

Mac Fantasticks

Fiddler in Chatham

forty-second Street

Machaydn's The Full Monty

Guys and Dolls in Chatham

Gypsy

Hairspray

Hairspray 2015

Hello, Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! '17

High Society

Into the Woods

Joseph. . .Dreamcoat

Jekyll and Hyde

The King and I

Kiss Me, Kate

La Cage aux Folles

Legally Blonde

Les Miz

Love a Piano

Mac-Haydn's Grease

Mame

Meet Me in St. Lou

The Music Man

Nice Work If You Can Get

9 to 5

Nunsense

Oliver!

Phantom

The Producers

R.D. Housewives of C.C.

Rent in Chatham

Saturday Night Fever

The Secret Garden

Show Boat

Singin' In The Rain

Sister Act

Smokey Joe's Cafe

Sondheim Putting It Toget

The Sound of Music

South Pacific

Spamalot

State Fair

McH's Sweeney Todd

Sweet Charity

Swing!

Thoroughly Modern Millie

West Side Story

Xanadu

Yng Frankenstein

Music

10 mini trios

Journeys by Robert Baksa

Mary Verdi: Precious Love

Mahagonny

New Stage Theatre Company

Death and The Maiden

Blood Sky

Fahrenheit 451

The Maids

Northern Stage

Living Together

NYSTI

Romeo & Juliet

And Then There Were None

King Island Christmas

A Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Philadelphia Story

Yours, Anne

Orphan Train

Of Mice and Men

Twelve Angry Jurors

Anastasia

1776

Macbeth

Miracle On 34th Street

Arsenic and Old Lace

American Soup

Ordeal By Innocence

Reunion

Oldcastle Theatre 2018

LDJourney Into Night

Proof

The Fourth Wall

Oldcastle Whipping Man

. . .Israel Potter

OLDCASTLE ARCHIVED REVIEW

"Almost, Maine" in VT

Around the World in. . .

Beauty Queen of Leenane

Big River

Black Comedy

Broadway Bound

Cabaret

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The City of Conversation

A Comedy of Tenors in VT

ConsulTrampAmerica'sSweet

Doubt in Vermont

4000 Miles

Fox on the Fairway

The Grass is Greener

Last Days of Mickey & Jea

Oldcastle Lion-Winter

Mauritius at Oldcastle

Moonlight & Magnolias

My Fair Lady

Night and Her Stars

Northern Boulevard

One Two Three

Other People's Money

Rembrandt's Gift

The Ride Down Mount Morgn

S. Holmes-Knight's Gambit

Shipwrecked

A Song For My Father

Strange Disappearance of

Tallley's Folly

Third

39 Steps

Time Stands Still

Proctors Schenectady

A Bronx Tale

Young Dr. Jekyll

On Your Feet

King and I

The Humans

Proctors Les Miserables

The Bodyguard, the musica

Finding Neverland

Fun Home

The Color Purple

Wicked

Restaurants

Bezalel Gables

Blantyre

Brazillian

Burrito Bound

SPICE!

Sand Lake Center for Arts

Men On Boats

SLCA Crucible

Sand Lake Annie

In the Heat of the Night

Schenectady Civic Players

The School for Lies

Other Desert Cities

An Inspector Calls

Shakespeare & Co 2018

HIR

S&COMothers&Sons

Heisenberg

As You Like It18

Creditors

Love's Labors Lost

Macbeth2018

Morning After Grace

Shakespeare & Co - 2017

Carnage, God of

Perfect Pair of Wharton

Tempest in the Garden

S&Cos Intimate Apparel

"Dream" in the Dell

Cymbeline 2017

S&C4000miles

Shakespeare & Co - 2016

Sotto Voce

The Two Gentlemen/Verona

Cry "Havoc!"

S&Co's "Or,"

Twelfth Night in the Dell

The Merchant of Venice

The Emperor of the Moon

Ugly Lies the Bone

The Taming

Shakespeare & Co. - 2015

An Illiad at S&Co

Red Velvet

Mother of the Maid

The Unexpected Man

The Comedy of Errors

Henry V

The How and The Why

Shakespeare & Co. - 2014

Private Eyes

Vanya, Sonia, Etc.

Henry IV, Parts One &Two

6-Actor Romeo and Juliet

TCWOWSabridged

Julius Caesar in Lenox

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Servant of Two Master

Shakespeare's Will

Shakespeare & Co -2013

Private Lives

It's a Wonderful Life

Accomplice

Kaufman's Barber Shop

Beauty Queen/Leenane

Mother Courage...

Richard II

Love's Labour's Lost

Heroes

Master Class

Shakespeare&Co - 2012

The Liar

2012 Santaland

S&Co's The 39 Steps

Satchmo at the Waldorf

The Tempest

Parasite Drag

King Lear

Tale of Allergist's Wife

Cassandra Speaks

Shakespeare & Co-2011

The Learned Ladies

Cymbeline

Santaland

War of the Worlds

Red Hot Patriot

Broadway in the Berkshire

Baskervilles (Revisited)

Romeo and Juliet, 2011

The Hollow Crown

As You Like It

The Memory of Water

SHAKES & CO ARCHIVES

All's Well That Ends Well

Bad Dates

The Canterville Ghost

Cindy Bella

Real Inspector Hound

Dreamer Examines Pillow

Goatwoman of Corvis Count

Golda's Balcony

Hound of Baskervilles

Irma Vep, The Mystery of

Julius Caesar

The Ladies Man

Liaisons Dangereuses

Mengelberg and Mahler

Othello

Pinter's Mirror

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Santaland Diaries

Sea Marks

Shirley Valentine

The Taster

Twelfth Night

White People

The Winter's Tale

Sharon Playhouse - 2018

Always. . .Patsy Cline

Barefoot in Sharon

Sharon Anything Goes

Sharon Playhouse Archive

Big River in Sharon

Far Away

Georgie

Gypsy in Sharon

TriArts' Les Miz

Little Shop of Horrors

Merrily We Roll Along

Minor Character

Sharon's Music Man

Quartet

Special Attractions

The Laramie Project

Grant and Twain

The Vagina Monologues

The Fabulous Lipitones

The Last Flapper

Karaoke Killer

Capitol Steps 2017

Masked Man

capitol steps 2016

Die Fledermaus

Grinder's Stand

Babylon Revisited

John

Dracula's Grandmother

Mock the Vote-CSteps 2015

The Aliens

It Shoulda Been You

Cranwell's Capitol Steps

Kill Me Now

The Garden of Martyrs

Capitol Steps 2013

The Capitol Steps

Doubt

Four Dogs and a Bone

Zara Spook & Other Lures

Trial of F.D.R.

Autres Temp. . .

Real Desperate Housewives

Capitol Steps for 2011

Ludwig Live!

The Seagull

On The Verge

Seascape

Starcrossed

"Earnest" in Albany

Paris, 1890--Unlaced

BCC's A Christmas Carol

Sister's Christmas Catech

The Pajame Game

Her Name is Vincent

Property Known as Garland

12th Night

I Know I Came...Something

Doubt, a Parable

Voices' A Christmas Carol

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Marie Galante

Machinal

Capitol Steps

Late Nite Catechism

Rabbit Hole

Taming of The Shrew

Mystery of Irma Vep

I Love a Piano

The News in Revue

The Mikado

Saturday Night Liv

A Chorus Line

BCC - Christmas Carol

Morgan O-Yuki

Rent

Stageworks Hudson 2013/14

Tomorrow in the Battle

Stockholm

Looped

Play by Play Unchained

Stagework Hudson Archives

The Amish Project

The Divine Sister

Forbidden Broadway

Imagining Madoff

Or,

Play By Play Blue Moons

Play By Play Shadows

The Rivalry

Tennis in Nablus

Theater Barn 2018

The Decorator

TBSpelling Bee

TB She Loves Me

Pump Boys at the Barn

The Mousetrap 2018

The Nerd

THEATER BARN ARCHIVES

A. Christie's The Hollow

The Addams Family

Agatha Christie's. .None

Altar Boyz

The Andrews Brothers

Better Late

Black Coffee

Boeing-Boeing

The Cocktail Hour

A Comedy of Tenors

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Don't Dress for Dinner

Don't Talk to the Actors

The Drowsy Chaperone

Evita

Forever Plaid

Forever Plaid-2016

The Full Monty

Funny Thing Happened

God of Carnage

Godspell-2012

Grease

Great American Trailer...

Gutenberg! The Musical

Guys and Dolls TB

Half and Half

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda

Housewives of Columbia

How the Other Half Loves

TBarn's I Love a Piano

I Love You....Now Change

It Had To Be You

John & Jen

Leading Ladies

Lies & Legends

The Little Dog Laughed

Lucky Me

Moonlight and Magnolias

Five Course Love

Moon Over Buffalo

The Mousetrap

Murder at Howard Johnson

A Murder is Announced

The Musical of Musicals

Nunsense at TB

Red, White and Tuna

Romance, Romance

Same Time, etc.

Fantasticks at the Barn

Spider's Web

Christie's Spider's Web

Stones In His Pockets

The 39 Steps

They're Playing Our Song

Towards Zero

The Unexpected Guest

Veronica's Room

Visiting Mr. Green

The Wedding Singer

You Should Be So Lucky

Young Frankenstein

Zanna Don't!

Town Players--Pittsfield

New and Used

Prodigal Cow

The Rocky Horror Show

Love, Loss & What I Wore

The Whale

Win/Lose/Draw

The Shape of Things

Five Women..Same Dress

Skin Deep

Stop Kiss

Life Is Short

Visual Arts

Walking the dog 2018

WTG Richard II

WALKING THE DOG: ARCHIVED

BecomingFrederickDouglass

Bon Appetit!

Cyrano

daemons

Eurydice

The Gospel of John

i take your hand in mine

Lost Frontier of America

Our Town

The Owl and the Pussycat

Painting Churches

The Umbilical Point

Under Milk Wood

Vritue, Desire, etc.

Walking the dog's HAMLET

Who Am I This Time?

WAM Theatre Company

Ann

The Last Wife

emelieredux

The Bakelite Masterpiece

Special

Holy Laughter

In Darfur

Emilie

The Old Mezzo

Attic, Pearls & 3 Fine Gi

Melancholy Play

Weston Playhouse -2018

Two Trains Running

Million $$ Quartet

Weston Doll's House 2

West Side Weston

Fun Home in Weston

Weston's Our Town

Weston Playhouse Archived

Weston's All My Sons

Analog and Vinyl

Baskervilles in Vermont

Buyer & Cellar

Weston's Chorus Line

Educating Rita

Ella

42nd Street

A Funny Thing...Forum

Fully Committed

Weston's Guys & Dolls

The Light in the Piazza

Les Miserables

Long Day's Journey Into N

Mamma Mia

Weston's La Mancha

Murder For Two

Music Man

Next to Normal

No Child. . .

Once

Weston's Other Place

Peter and the Starcatcher

Pregnancy Pact

Pump Boys and Dinettes

A Raisin in the Sun

Rent - Weston

Round & Round the Garden

Souvenir

Tenderly

25th Spelling Bee

Weston's Uncle Vanya

V&S&M&Spike

Williamstown Theatre 2018

Dangerous House

The Member of the Wedding

Seared

Lempicka

Artney Jackson

The Sound Inside

The Closet

WTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

5x10

A Doll's House

A Month in the Country

Actually

After the Revolution

An American Daughter

American Hero

And No More Shall We Part

Animal Crackers

The Atheist

Beyond Therapy

The Blue Deep

Broke-Ology

Caroline in Jersey

The Chinese Room

Children

The Clean House

Cost of Living

David Storey's "Home"

The Elephant Man

Far From Heaven

Fifth of July

A Flea in Her Ear

Fool For Love

Funny Thing/Forum

Funny Thing II

A Great Wilderness

Hapgood

Importance of/Earnest

An Intervention

It's Jewdy's Show

Johnny Baseball

WTF's June Moon

Kinship

Knickerbocker

The Last Goodbye

Legacy

A Legendary Romance

Living On Love

The Model American

Moon for the Misbegotten

Moscow, Moscow, . . .

Off the Main Road

The Old Man&The Old Moon

One Slight Hitch

Paradise Blue

Pygmalion

Quartermaine's Terms

Romance Novels for Dummie

The Roommate

The Rose Tattoo

Samuel J. and K.

She Loves Me

She Stoops To Conquer

Six Degrees of Separation

Streetcar Named Desire

Ten Cents a Dance

Three Hotels

Three Sisters

The Torch-Bearers

True West

Unknown Soldier

The Visit

What is..Cause of Thunder

Where Storms are Born

WTF's Our Town

Picnic by William Inge. Directed by Ed Dignum

Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman


"I intend to go far."


Adrien Behn (l) admires Mike Meier (r) in front of family and friends in Picnic; photo: Dan Region


          Sometimes a picnic just isn’t what it seems - not all fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs and iced tea, certainly. Not just fireworks on the river, three-legged races and volleyball. Not a romantic tryst, either, while family and friends politely look the other way. Sometimes a Picnic is a life-changing, love-enhancing, emotionally gritty and over-the-top drama that alters every perspective we have on life. At least that is what playwright William Inge would have us believe in his aptly titled play, "Picnic," now on stage at the Ghent Playhouse.


          Picnic was never an easy work to buy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for the 1952-53 season, it slyly combined human comedy and melodrama to present a picture of mid-western sensibilities to an audience overly familiar with the stereotypes that peopled its limited stage set: the old-maid schoolteacher, the aging bachelor, the antsy teen-age beauty, the hunky drifter, the "papa’s boy" student and the tomboy. It was a more realistic photograph of people’s lives than the other hits of its season, "Sabrina Fair" with its fairy-tale morality, "The Solid Gold Cadillac" with its fairy-tale humorous take on the Wall Street economics, and "Tea and Sympathy" with its fairy-tale spin on human-kindness. In "Picnic" there was grit and love and despair and desperation and you could identify with the characters.

          If that sounds straightforward, then take a giant step backward and look again. This gritty, novella on stage, which takes place over a 24 hour period in its three acts (four scenes) has its laughs and its tears and its slight stake in unreality. In this new local production it also has some very good actors who can overcome the modest short-comings in its time-encrusted script.

          Howard Bevans, the crusty old bachelor who resists the wiles of the women he’s known, is played by Tracy Trimm. Trimm has a twinkle in his eye and a spark to his step. He seems almost too old to be worn down by the pleasures of the flesh or the pressures of the heart and yet, in the third act when his lady-friend presses home the point of emotional and sexual dependency he breaks and allows himself, with visible angst, to take the next step. It is a key performance in the success of this production.

          His partner in this secondary story in the play, is Rosemary Sydney, an old-maid schoolteacher (not really old, but rather middle-aged and stuck in the rut of the psychologically stymied) played beautifully by Meg Dooley. Self-assured in the first act she gradually, if quickly, warps into one of the desperate ones and by her opening scene in Act Three she is clearly at the breaking point. Dooley comes close to breaking hearts as she asks Howard to marry her, demands the attention she has long denied herself. Together she and Trimm forge the iron-girdled heart of the play.

          In counterpoint to their simple and straightforward story is the romantic triangle, or quadrangle of the Owens sisters, Madge and Millie, Madge’s boyfriend Alan and his school-chum, a dropout named Hal. Madge is the pretty one, Millie the brainy kid. Alan is robust and from a good family. Hal is without shame or self-pity and on the hobo-trail. Both girls are attracted to both boys but no one is paying any real attention to what is right for each of them and their friends. Madge is almost engaged to Alan when she meets Hal. Alan is very proprietary about her. Naturally she falls - hook, line and sinker - for hunky Hal who is supposed to be her sister’s date for the picnic.

          Michael Hitchcock plays Alan for every overtly masculine impulse written into this character. He carries it off, even in a frilly apron which, luckily, didn’t get the hearty laugh that director Dignum may have been anticipating. That’s good for the character. We like Alan, after all. He’s honorable and nice and has a definite strength in his ease with people. Hitchcock makes him as real as can be and keeps him that way, even in the fight scene which felt all too real.

          Sarah Naramore is excellent as tomboyish sixteen year old Millie. Her transition from boyishness to girlishness is delicious to watch. She brings a clarity to the relationship she shares with Alan and that is a delicious element in this otherwise sordid sister-rivalry that exists in the script. Her older sister, the town beauty, Madge, is played by Adrien Behn. Not as convincing in her role as Naramore is in hers, she nonetheless gathers steam by the end of the play becoming a hearty, love-encrusted young woman, willing to sacrifice even her mother’s support where the affairs of the heart are concerned. Again, under the director’s watchful eye, a human transition occurs before our gaze.

          Hal, the object her unbidden affection, is effectively played by Mike Meier. This is a trap role for a man. We anticipate the hearty, well-developed chest and arms of William Holden, his shirt torn off, his muscles rippling. This is the image that has been thrust at us since the movie poster first revealed that animal quality in Hal. Meier gives us something else. He gives us a smile that delights. he gives us a sense of humor that ingratiates. He gives us a purity that shouldn’t exist in a drifter, a drop out, a man without a purpose. He displays the inner muscles in the man rather than merely the outer shell of attraction. It is easy, from the opening scene, to understand his attractions and why the women in this Kansas town are focused on him from the instant he appears in their midst.

          As the girls’ mother, Kathy Wohlfeld has a hard job holding center stage, yet she manages, with Inge’s help and Dignum’s too, to turn the entire play into a story about her. She is the center of this tiny community and when, at the end of the play, people have settled their own sensual business, we are left with her, a woman defeated by her own back story, trying to understand her present and not contemplate her future. It is a lovely performance.

          Lael Locke plays the lusty neighbor-lady with grace and charm, throwing sidelong glances and sighing over her responsibilities. She gives Helen the humanity the character deserves without ever indulging in a single self-pitying gesture. The balance of the company do fine in their limited roles, mostly serving as window-dressing to the two, twisted love stories.

          The Pulitzer is generally given to a work that illuminates aspects of the American way of life and that is exactly what this play gives us. Amazingly the early 1950s story is not very different from today’s America and its inter-generational troubles. Director Ed Dignum takes advantage of that simple truth and never makes us feel that we’re watching an old, animated photograph yellowing with age. His people, stripped of their period costumes designed perfectly by Joanne Maurer, are very much people we recognize. Inge’s language has the stilted resonance of time past, but its natural delivery by these actors only creates a remove of place and not of time. Dignum has encouraged a naturalness that says "mid-west" not "sixty years ago." That’s one of the best achievements this director has managed. As for his dancing moments, well, that’s something the actors should be dealing with, not the director.

          Joe Iuviene has created a terrific, if cramped, back yard set for the Ghent stage and the lighting and sound designs by Bradley Fay are not the best I’ve encountered in this local arena. Fay has a long way to go to meet the success of his predecessors here.

          The Ghent Playhouse has, for the most part, brought a treat to the neighborhood. A Labor Day Picnic in mid-winter presents a well-defined picture of the way things always are if we’re open to the sudden alterations that make the differences in our lives.

◊01/27/2008◊

Picnic plays at the Ghent Playhouse on weekends only through February 10. Tickets are $12 - $15.

For schedules, and reservations, call 518-392-6264 or go to their website: www.ghentplayhouse.org.


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