Madge Owens is restless. Whenever that whistle blows as a train moves through her small Kansas town, the 18-year-old dime store clerk imagines she’s on it, headed somewhere, anywhere, else.
It’s not until Hal Carter (Zachariah Brown), a good-looking drifter and former football star with few prospects, shows up on Labor Day weekend that Madge (Lauren Billings) sees a way out of the dull but secure life her mother Flo (Margo Lukens) has planned for her.
True North Theatre’s production of William Inge’s “Picnic” at the Cyrus Pavilion at the University of Maine is a beautifully produced and acted show that works hard at overcoming the 1953 social conventions inherent in the script but never quite succeeds. The message that a woman is not truly fulfilled until she finds her man just can’t be easily set aside, especially in the crucial scene where Rosemary Sydney (Holly Roach) begs her beau Harold Bevans (Blane Shaw) to marry her.
Inge was born and raised in Independence, Kansas, where his mother ran a boarding house for local teachers. He based some of the characters in “Picnic” on the women he met there as a boy. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1953, the year it premiered on Broadway with Paul Newman in the cast.
Hal comes to town to ask for a job from his former fraternity brother Alan Seymour (Owen Hines), Madge’s boyfriend. The drifter meets her doing a few chores for neighbor Helen Potts (Sue Amero) in exchange for breakfast.
Hal — to borrow a phrase from “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” — is “a walking streak of sex.” With his dark hair, brooding posture and six-pack abs, Brown exudes masculinity. He spends most of Act One gorgeously posing a la James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
But as Hal gets to know Madge and lets his guard down just a bit, the actor slowly reveals Hal’s vulnerabilities, mesmerizing Madge and theatergoers. Brown perfectly captures the charming, mysterious bad boy that made Dean and others film stars so appealing to the Boomer generation.
As Madge, Billings beautifully brings to life the pretty Owens’ sister who longs to be in a place where she is a stranger. She portrays Madge’s sexuality like a flower slowly and joyfully opening its petals to the sun. Billings lets the audience know in no uncertain terms that Madge has no choice but to follow Hal even if he turns out to be the wrong choice, as Flo predicts.
And then there’s Sophia E. Mullins as Madge’s little sister Millie, an artistic Tomboy who is headed to college and a writer’s life in the Big Apple. Mullins is a gifted performer who wears her character’s emotions as if they were a costume. Forced to change from her overalls to a blouse and dress, Mullins perfectly captures Millie’s discomfort and her desire to be anywhere else but in her family’s backyard. She, more than anyone else on stage, brings to life Inge’s longing to leave behind small town life for something, anything, less stifling.
The rest of the cast, Kaddie Sharpe, Thomas Demers and Holly Costar, help create an ensemble that is believable. Roach and Shaw are especially good as the couple whose decision to marry is more practical than romantic.
Director D. Granke, a University of Maine theater professor, makes the audience feel like it is peering over a fence into the backyard of this family. That intimacy, the fine cast and the 95-minute running time make “Picnic” a tight and taut production worth seeing in spite of the script’s flaws.
True North has proven with Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” that it is adept at showcasing the “classics” for a 21st century audience, but Inge’s portrayal of women, with the exception of Millie, as only being fulfilled without a man can’t so easily be turned into a tale of finding oneself and escaping expectations. My 30-something, theater-nerd seatmate, who was unfamiliar with the play, described it as “a Hallmark movie with better acting.” She’s not entirely wrong.
“Picnic” will be performed at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Cyrus Pavilion at the University of Maine. For tickets, visit 207tix.com.