Fine cast sets the table for '50s flashback, 'Picnic'

Small-town Kansas in a '50s summer: The heat is oppressive, the mores repressive, and the level of angst impressive. It's no picnic.

That's

Picnic

, in a Kansas kernel. The themes that struck playwright William Inge's 1950s audiences may not seem as urgent or provocative now - rampant alcoholism is a consistent plot hinge - but his stories are well told, and command another look.

Picnic

, in a wonderfully acted production that opened Friday at Montgomery Theater in Souderton, follows the just-ended Broadway revival of Inge's

Come Back, Little Sheba

, which has some of the same themes and was also a thoughtful re-creation of another time in America.

In the Montgomery's staging of

Picnic

, by artistic director Tom Quinn, you can almost hear the '60s trying feverishly to burst out of that era. Quinn assembled top-notch cast members who play the middle-American '50s as if they'd gone back in time to live it before assuming their roles.

Here is the schoolteacher (Hayden Saunier) who matter-of-factly calls herself an old maid; she's desperate to marry a boozing merchant (Tim Moyer) who's more like a brother than a boyfriend. The teacher boards with a single mother (Catherine Rush) who tries to forget her own alcoholic no-show husband. She battles the onslaught of '50s culture to raise her two teenage daughters right.

One is a brainy tomboy (Caitlin Elizabeth Reilly), the other the town beauty (Meghan Heimbecker). A pretty girl's future? Mom, with pre-feminist absolutism, sees only one road to success: a rich guy ("you'd have credit cards in all the stores"). The rich guy in question is a preppie big-man-on-campus (Joe Mallon).

Dressed in Courtney Shea's period costumes, they all live in the comfort of their hangups until a big-hearted and highly repressed neighbor (Mickey Goldhaber) hires a super-stud drifter to clear her yard, and he meets the two girls. Hal has a past, we quickly learn, with the preppie boyfriend and also the bottle.

It may be typically hot in small-town Kansas in summer, but on this particular Labor Day weekend, things are about to blister - '50s-style, of course: full-frontal desperation.

Picnic

marked the Broadway debut, in 1953, of a kid named Paul Newman as the preppie. The 1955 movie version paired Kim Novak as the pretty daughter and William Holden as Hal. The play's a performance showcase for anyone playing Hal, who is both vulnerable and macho, a braggart compensating for a deficit in self-confidence.

Evan Jonigkeit, in the Montgomery Theater production, is outstanding in the role - strikingly good-looking, and he moves through A. Clark Duncan's front-porch set with the natural grace of a racehorse. You can sense his Hal thinking about how he's going to win people over - or how he has, once again, lost their goodwill.

And, in this production, you can sense something even Inge may not have realized when he wrote

Picnic

: Change is coming, and there'll be no going back.

Through May 10 at Montgomery Theater, 124 Main St., Souderton. Tickets $19-$33. Information: 215-723-9984 or

» READ MORE: www.montgomerytheater.org

.