Any reports on Transport Groups' PICNIC or SHEBA?

I hadn't felt a need to see PICNIC again after the Roundabout revival, or COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA, after the MTC production.

The Transport Groups' I REMEMBER MAMA was such an unexpected pleasure that I'm curious about their William Inge play repertory that started last week. Anyone gone yet, or plan on going?

Seeing Picnic on Saturday. Will see Sheba eventually. Picnic is one of my favorite plays, and it's an absolute treat when done well. The recent-ish Roundabout production got so much wrong. The Transport Group has had so many home runs in the last couple of years (in addition to the already mentioned I Remember Mama, their production of Inge's rarely produced The Dark at the Top of the Stairs was glorious) that I'm very optimistic. The casting for both is great.

Well there really is no set to speak of, so that effects the staging. The gym space has three rectangular plywood boards to represent the houses with two chairs in front of each. And that's the entirety of the set. So the staging is a lot of pacing from one end of the gym to the other. Extremely minimalistic.

The performances were good, if not exceptional. I think to me the play just felt a little too dated. It wasn't just all the statements on what it means to be a man or woman. Some plays are timeless and others give you enough context to fully understand the situation. I felt like Picnic was in an odd middle ground where it was trying to be universal but I had trouble with some of its ideas and I couldn't totally put myself in the mindset of the time period when it was written. And I could actively feel that. I could feel that if I had been watching this play when it first premiered, there would be a level of meaning I would get from understanding the social context. I could guess at some things but it wasn't totally clear from either the text or the performances. Also, I don't think the romance plays as well in this decade or at least it didn't for me in this production. The actors were attractive but I didn't root for the characters or see anything that tragic or poignant in that relationship.

I do think all the actors were fully committed and if you had a greater understanding of the play, you'd probably enjoy seeing it again. It feels weird to call it intimate with the actors running the length of the "stage" but when they are in front of you, they are quite close. Emily Skinner was great. I see AC126748's point about how she would come across as shrewish if played wrong though I still struggled to get what Inge was trying to accomplish with that character. I thought Hannah Elless was obviously older than her part but was actually much better than she was in Bright Star. John Cariani seemed a little miscast just because I could sense that another actor would have brought more to that character. He seemed like he should have been skeevier. I thought it was very competent but not so much... more than that.

I concur with After Eight. I think the Gym at Judson is a really terrible performance space, both unsuited for most productions and remarkably uncomfortable.

Come Back, Little Sheba is a better play (I don't know why companies produce Picnic when Summer Brave is so much better), but both of these productions are excellent overall, with the Picnic being far superior to the recent Broadway revival and the best production I've seen of the play next to David Cromer's Writers' Theatre production.

I saw Come Back, Little Sheba yesterday afternoon. It's a strong production that makes the case for the play as an important work of its time, and is nicely anchored by Heather Mac Rae's understated Lola. I was not so taken with Joseph Kolinski's Doc, who seemed too visibly on the edge of collapse from the first moment onward. This character works best if he appears quietly resigned throughout the first act, thus making his second act explosion all the more unsettling. Kolinski's Doc always seemed momentarily removed from a breakdown. The incidental music, which only slightly bothered me in Picnic, seemed really intrusive here. The supporting cast is solid, particularly Hannah Elless' Marie and Jennifer Piech's Mrs. Coffman.

In all, I think Come Back, Little Sheba is the better play, but Picnic is given the better overall production here. But I'm glad that I saw both and glad that Transport Group has once again highlighted this talented, oft-neglected writer.