William Inge’s Picnic is a gentle, pleasantly comedic drama. Focusing as it does on a rural community at the end of summer, the classic mid-20th-century stage play finds an appropriately idyllic home with SummerStage in Lapham Peak State Park.
Phil Stepanski plays a young drifter named Hal who brashly stumbles through the community with charm and swagger, tempered by the concerns of a college student home for the summer (played with ample gravity by Sam Ellis Sherman). Interesting things are going on in the story’s foreground with the men, but Inge’s real focus seems to be the women in the ensemble. The script is remarkably sensitive to gender inequality. Donna Daniels plays a matriarch who must impress upon her eldest daughter the importance of finding and marrying the right man while marveling at how talented her youngest daughter is.
The rivalry between the two sisters is rendered with heart and nuance by Jessica Kennedy and Alyssa Falvey Renkas. Kennedy balances well between the younger sister’s shyness and assertiveness. Renkas is enjoyably dichotomous as the older sister. She’s both listless and restless as someone who seems to both love and fear the idea of leaving small town life. Rebecca Richards is admirably balanced as a long-single schoolteacher who longs for someone to share her life with. Richards manages a nice balance between individuality and need in the role.
Through Sept. 5 at Lapham Peak State Park. For tickets, visit summerstageofdelafield.org
