Season Select: Picnic

Picnic

By William Inge

Directed by Brenda DeVita

Fast Facts

Playing: Hill Theatre | June 20 - September 13
Featuring: Tracy Michelle Arnold, Dee Dee Batteast, Sun Mee Chomet, Rasell Holt, Colleen Madden
Genre: American Classic
Last Seen at APT: First Time!
Go If You Liked: Our Town (2023), Death of a Salesman (2016), A Streetcar Named Desire (2015)

About Picnic

It’s almost time for the annual Labor Day picnic in Independence, Kansas. But the town buzz is all about Hal – the young handyman hired by sweet Helen Potts. Her neighbor, Flo, is less than enthusiastic about having Hal in the vicinity of her daughters, Madge and Millie. When it turns out Madge’s steady guy, the steadfast Alan, is an old friend of Hal’s, Flo relents, and plans are made for Hal to stick around town more permanently. But young love may have other ideas, and hearts will be filled and broken in this play about desire, expectations and the sacrifices and settlements people make when it comes to love.

When Picnic first premiered on Broadway in 1953, iconic theatre critic Brooks Atkinson reviewed the play for The New York Times, writing that “it was an original, honest play with awareness of people. Most of the characters in ‘Picnic’ do not know what is happening to them, but Mr. Inge does, for he is an artist.”

William Inge’s talent for developing these realistic portraits is most often attributed to the playwright’s early personal experiences as well as his gift for constructing compelling dialogue. Born in Independence, Kansas - the implied, sleepy setting of Picnic - William Inge grew up observing others. His mother, Maude, rented rooms of the family home to boarders, including the town’s single schoolteachers. Inge would later draw on his early small town experiences for several of his plays and novels, including Picnic, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Bus Stop - all of which are set in Midwestern rural towns, earning Inge the moniker “Playwright of the Midwest.”

Long before Picnic won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1953, Inge began dreaming up the romantic drama while teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. After striking up a chance friendship with Missouri native and aspiring playwright Thomas Lanier Williams, better known today as Tennessee Williams, Inge turned his attention from teaching to writing: a change in direction he was more than happy to make.

Front Porch, the first iteration of what would later become Picnic, premiered locally in St. Louis in 1948. After the commercial and critical success of Inge’s first Broadway play, Come Back, Little Sheba in 1950, Inge returned to Front Porch, reflecting that the new project made him feel “invigorated to be working with people out of doors, with people young and old who were still living their lives and not just remembering what their lives had been.”

Since Picnic’s premiere in 1953, the play has gone on to have several lives, perhaps most famously the 1955 film adaptation starring William Holden, Kim Novak and Rosalind Russell. Inge would again return to Picnic following the film, this time revising an older version of the play entitled Summer Brave. The play, which features an alternate ending, was staged in 1975 following Inge’s death.

There was also a short-lived musical adaptation of Picnic, called Hot September, that has since been lost to time. After it opened to decidedly negative reviews in a Boston out-of-town try out (Inge was not attached to the project), very little remains of the production. One song from the production, “Golden Moment,” went on to have some success as a single covered by Frank Sinatra in 1965.

Though lesser known than his contemporaries Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, Inge’s impact on the American theater of the 1950s and beyond carries on today. His slice-of-life works were often radical for the time, featuring unflinching looks at class disparity, sexual repression and substance abuse. Today, the William Inge Center for the Arts in Kansas hosts guest playwrights in Inge’s childhood home for their residency programs: a rather poetic ending for a man who dedicated his body of works to the small towns across America.