Quogue - This year the Hampton Theatre Company (HTC) celebrates 25 years of bringing live theater to Long Island's East End. In celebration of the 25th Anniversary season, starting in October and continuing through June, HTC will present four terrific plays at the beautiful Quogue Community Hall, plays chosen for the excellence of their writing, their commentary on the human condition, and their power to resonate with and entertain theater audiences. We hope you will join us for all of them.

Upcoming Plays
 • On October 22 "Picnic," William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about love, lust, longing and disillusionment in a more innocent time and place. "Picnic" will be presented for three weekends, Thursdays through Sundays, through November 8, at the Quogue Community Hall on Jessup Avenue in Quogue.
This show also earned the playwright a Pulitzer Prize, along with a number of critics' awards, when it opened on Broadway in 1953, and it was subsequently adapted for a 1955 film with the same director as the play, Joshua Logan.

The movie, starring William Holden and Kim Novak, won two Academy Awards and was nominated for four others, including best director and best picture.

And though the play is now more than 50 years old, George Loizides, the director of the HTC production opening this week in Quogue, says the characters, themes and issues the playwright addresses in "Picnic" are just as compelling and relevant today as they were when the play, and then the movie, wowed audiences and critics back in the 1950s.

One of the ideas that the playwright explored in "Picnic" and his other plays was the difference between appearances and reality: the ways in which what's on the surface can mask darker forces in play.

"If you look at the set, it's sort of 'American Dream'-ish," Loizides said in an interview this week at the theater, pointing to the picket fences surrounding perfect houses on the stage, suggesting what he called the "1950s post-war calmness on the surface."

"But under the surface there was more unrest," the director said. "The 1950s still had Jim Crow laws for segregation. Abortions were still illegal. Sex out of marriage was illegal in many states.

"The social and moral unrest of the times mirrors the unrest in the lives of the women in this play: lonely lives of desperation."

Rachael McOwen and Justin Sease in a scene from William Inge's "Picnic," opening this week in Quogue. Photo by Tom Kochie

As the play opens, the arrival in town of a rugged and handsome drifter, Hal, played in Quogue by Justin Sease, sets all the women in motion, sparking reactions ranging from passion to fear, and serving as a different kind of catalyst for each of them.

The 18-year-old Madge (Rachael McOwen) is the most beautiful girl in town, going steady with the richest boy in town, Alan (Nicholas Yenson), but he doesn't arouse real passion in her. "When she meets Hal," Loizides said, "the fire is lit."

Madge worries that she is limited to one dimension by everyone's focus on her beauty, and she sees in Hal, in addition to a chance for real passion, a ticket out of her straitjacketed life stranded in Kansas.

Meanwhile, her mother, Flo (Pam Kern), is fearful that Madge's attraction to Hal will wreck her chances to marry Alan. She also fears that her younger daughter, Millie (Catherine Cusick), a tomboy who has already won a scholarship to go away to college when she finishes high school, will be distracted by the handsome stranger.

Rosemary (Frances Sherman), a schoolteacher who is boarding in Flo's house, has an on-going but not very committed relationship with Howard (Paul Bolger). Seeing Hal's independence makes her realize that she needs to get Howard to commit or she will be spending the rest of her life alone.

Mrs. Potts (Diana Marbury) is the first one to encounter Hal, and it is she who suggests that Hal take Millie to the picnic, which in turn makes Flo fearful for her younger daughter.

In addition, Mrs. Potts, who had been married for one day before her mother chased her down and had the wedding annulled many years in the past, now must care for her invalid mother. Whether because he represents the son she never had, or only serves as a reminder that she once had a man, and love, in her life, Hal is welcomed into Mrs. Potts's home.

The big themes of the play, the director said, deal with loneliness, a sense of being stranded, and love and how it changes things, for better or worse.

"A lot of this could relate to Inge's own history," Loizides said, noting that the playwright's mother ran a boarding house with three schoolteachers living in it. Another autobiographical footnote is tied to the role of alcohol in the play, and in the stories about Madge's now-absent father, who had a reputation for drinking and fooling around, much like the playwright's father.

Loizides directed a production of "Summer Brave" in the late 1980s when he was teaching at Ward Melville High School, principally because it has more characters and so is better suited for a high school cast. He also directed Inge's "Bus Stop" for the Hampton Theatre Company last year.

"It helps to do multiple plays by a playwright, as a director," Loizides said. One reason, he said, is that "most playwrights deal with particular themes. This is true of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller," playwrights of the period who are often compared with Inge, "as well as of Inge himself."

Beyond the fact that the playwright is dealing with universal themes of loneliness, love and desire that transcend time, the director said he is drawn to Inge "because I like his style. I find the language to be natural: common and simplistic on the surface, but saying a lot more - it has a lot of depth.

"It's like the 1950s: simplistic on the surface, but filled with a lot of social and moral unrest. And I like the way he portrays his characters: he lays bare their weaknesses, but still makes them sympathetic."

Marbury, who plays Mrs. Potts, is the artistic director and one of the original members of the Hampton Theatre Company, having played a role in the third show the HTC produced, "Hot L Baltimore." Reflecting this week on the company's 25th anniversary, she said, "I look at the amount of work that's been done over the past 25 years, and it's wonderful to see how the company has grown." The late June Ewing, one of the original founders, "would be proud to see what it's become, and the differences between then and now," she said.

As for the choice of "Picnic" to kick off the silver anniversary season, "that has always been one of the great assets of the company," she said, "choosing so many wonderful plays" that are rewarding for actors and audiences alike.

Sarah Hunnewell, the executive director of the HTC, said this week, "as, sadly, local theater companies struggle to survive, and some of our prominent local venues no longer produce plays at all, the Hampton Theatre Company is proud to be still going strong after 25 years, bringing the East End four to five important plays each season.

"The company has always operated frugally, and often on a proverbial shoestring, but has strived foremost to keep its standards high and prove that great theater can be affordable."

Company co-founder Jimmy Ewing has been acting, directing and designing and building sets for the HTC since the very beginning, in 1984. "I think this opening show, along with the rest of this year's 25th anniversary season, reflects what has been HTC's approach to choosing theater pieces," Ewing said.

"We want to present the best of the classics, a range of relevant contemporary plays and a generous shot of good simple fun," he continued. "'Picnic' is one of the great classic pieces still significant today as we continually stumble along searching for meaning in a world of private, individual lives so often seemingly uneventful and mundane.

"And then," he said, trailing off in wonder, "we are suddenly shocked and surprised ..."

The Hampton Theatre Company is happy to welcome a number of new faces to its stage with this production as well as some familiar ones. Rachael McOwen makes her HTC debut as Madge, the beautiful young woman whose predictable future is thrown into doubt when a handsome drifter comes to town. Justin Sease and Nicholas Yenson join her, also as HTC newcomers, in the roles, respectively, of Hal, the handsome drifter, and Alan, Madge's wealthy and wholesome beau. Catherine Cusick plays Madge's bright and tomboyish sister Millie.

Among the familiar faces returning to the HTC stage in "Picnic" are Pam Kern, who appeared most recently as the hypochondriacal Flo in "The Odd Couple - Female Version" last spring, playing Madge and Millie's mother Flo (yes, another Flo!); Diana Marbury as Flo's neighbor Helen Potts; Frances Sherman, as the desperately frustrated schoolteacher Rosemary; and Lara Bowen and Jessica Howard, as Rosemary's schoolteacher friends, Irma and Christine.

Paul Bolger returns to the HTC stage after a long hiatus (he appeared last in the company's production of "Summer and Smoke") in the role of Howard, Rosemary's confirmed bachelor suitor. Marc Cotter makes his HTC debut as Bomber.

George A. Loizides, who directed HTC's productions of "Bus Stop" and "The Odd Couple" directs. The set is by James Ewing and Sean Marbury, with lighting by Sebastian Paczynski and costumes by Teresa Lebrun.

"Picnic" will be presented from October 22 through November 8 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 p.m. For ticket information, call OvationTix at 1-866-811-4111, or visit www.hamptontheatre.org.

 • In January, Theresa Rebeck's thriller "Mauritius" about three Mamet-esque con artists who take on the ladies in a cutthroat battle of wits over a rare stamp collection.

 • In March, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Dale Wasserman from Ken Kesey's novel, the high-energy classic tale of the wily Randle P. McMurphy and his band of colorful fellow inmates wreaking havoc at a mental institution.

 • In June, reprising a hilarious comedy presented during the company's first season 25 years ago, Alan Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce," a delightful romp about three bedrooms, three couples and the special kind of confusion that comes from bouncing on bedsprings.

Subscriptions And Ticket Purchasing
The Hampton Theatre Company upgraded the ticket purchasing system this spring for the added convenience of their customers. Instead of leaving your reservation on voice mail and arriving at the theater 30 minutes early to find the seats of your choice, you may now buy subscriptions or single tickets and reserve your seats at any time and at no additional cost directly through their website at www.hamptontheatre.org, or by calling OvationTix at 1-866-811-4111 during normal business hours. Season subscriptions and group discounts are available.