William Inge (1913–1973)

i had never heard of this play (or author) before randomly seeing a performance 12 or 13 years ago. i was blown away by it, and am glad i finally got around to reading it. i'm not 100% sure it holds up because it's so full of social commentary, but for the time it is excellent. i don't think i would believe it was written by a man if i didn't know better. (for me, that's a compliment.) it talks so deeply about beauty and identity, and societal expectation. (the beautiful sister isn't thought show more of as a real person, but as a doll because she's so pretty, and she questions her own vitality because no one seems to see *her* at all. the less pretty sister, because she's not as pretty as madge, and possibly because she's younger, has more independence to be herself, but is also constantly being compared to someone she can't match. the teacher boarder who is past her prime but desperately wants to be married. the neighbor who takes care of her invalid mother who took her chance of "freedom" away years ago. and then, how freedom only comes to women by attaching themselves to a man in marriage.) it's quick and intelligent, and says a lot with so few words and pages. it's so sad and so real and just beautifully done.

(and it's somewhat possible that my reading is colored by how much i loved the performance i saw, back in the summer of 2006 or 2007. but i don't think that i remember enough to be attributing aspects of the live play to this one.)

"It doesn't hurt what names I call her! She's pretty, so names don't bother her at all! She's pretty, so nothing else matters."

"I don't care if you're real or not. You're the prettiest girl I ever saw." show less

this didn't resonate quite as loudly with me this time, although i still liked it quite a bit. it's such a short little play but really says so much, which i really appreciate. (he does put quite a bit of what the character is feeling in the stage directions, which maybe helps deepen the characterization a bit for me.) this time around, i thought a little more about hal and what inge might have been saying about him or about young men at that time. honestly he hadn't interested me that much show more before, as i had been so focused on all of the women and their stories and the messaging around their sad situations.

i know inge has talked about the humor in this play and in summer brave in particular, but i just find this so tragic. how madge is reduced to her looks, how millie isn't as pretty as madge and so isn't taken seriously (not that madge is - she is only her outer shell and nothing more), how rosemary is running out of time to get married and is so bitter about it all, how mrs potts had a literal afternoon of freedom and no more, how flo had to raise these girls on her own regretting her attempt at love and freedom. all of them stuck, all of them unable to make real change. and the constant reminder of that train whistle in the background, telling them there's a bigger world and other places to go.

as to hal, he is a sad character, too, but it feels more of his own doing. he's a player and an opportunist, but maybe part of that is not wanting to conform to the standards that this very restrictive society have set up. i'll have to give him more thought.

madge leaves at the end but to me this isn't a bid for freedom. she is following hal, who won't be where he said he would, and she will end up either destitute in tulsa or back at home having wrecked her chance at a better life. it will end very badly for her, in my mind. not that alan would have been a good choice either. he may have been wealthy and secure in the community, but he only saw her as a pretty girl, nothing more. i forgot that rosemary leaves to marry howard; in my memory he doesn't come back to wed her, but it's hard to imagine that's much of a happy ending for her, too. she does get married, but how much both of them are settling is sad.

this is still a powerful little play, and in its time i suspect it was quite the statement to make.

"A pretty girl doesn't have long -- just a few years. Then she's the equal of kings and she can walk out of a shanty like this and live in a palace with a doting husband who'll spend his life making her happy. ... Because once, once she was young and pretty. If she loses her chance then, she might as well throw all her prettiness away."

"It doesn't hurt what names I call her! She's pretty, so names don't bother her at all! She's pretty, so nothing else matters."

"I don't care if you're real or not. You're the prettiest girl I ever saw."

(3.75-4 stars)

from oct 2019:
i had never heard of this play (or author) before randomly seeing a performance 12 or 13 years ago. i was blown away by it, and am glad i finally got around to reading it. i'm not 100% sure it holds up because it's so full of social commentary, but for the time it is excellent. i don't think i would believe it was written by a man if i didn't know better. (for me, that's a compliment.) it talks so deeply about beauty and identity, and societal expectation. (the beautiful sister isn't thought of as a real person, but as a doll because she's so pretty, and she questions her own vitality because no one seems to see *her* at all. the less pretty sister, because she's not as pretty as madge, and possibly because she's younger, has more independence to be herself, but is also constantly being compared to someone she can't match. the teacher boarder who is past her prime but desperately wants to be married. the neighbor who takes care of her invalid mother who took her chance of "freedom" away years ago. and then, how freedom only comes to women by attaching themselves to a man in marriage.) it's quick and intelligent, and says a lot with so few words and pages. it's so sad and so real and just beautifully done.

(and it's somewhat possible that my reading is colored by how much i loved the performance i saw, back in the summer of 2006 or 2007. but i don't think that i remember enough to be attributing aspects of the live play to this one.)

"It doesn't hurt what names I call her! She's pretty, so names don't bother her at all! She's pretty, so nothing else matters."

"I don't care if you're real or not. You're the prettiest girl I ever saw." (4 stars) show less

i hope i can put my finger on it, but this felt more different to me (from picnic) than i remember it feeling. there are the obvious differences, like how we don't get nearly as much from hal; he's much more a foil here than a full blown character in his own right. rosemary is meaner and maybe more true to her character, but much harder to be around. her bitterness - which certainly exists in picnic - shapes everything in a stronger way here. she's more obviously desperate and it very much show more affects her attitude toward madge and mrs potts and of course howard and hal. there's the fact that in this version, alan didn't really like hal from the beginning; hal is painted as someone who lies and cheats and steals and never takes responsibility or thinks about who he hurts along the way. none of this is exactly different than the hal we see in picnic necessarily, but there he is charming and you could make an argument that his intentions aren't bad. that's harder to do here, although he does seem to treat millie genuinely nicely.

those differences feel kind of significant. and then of course there is the different ending. when madge stays, the public humiliation she is and will be subjected to, and the reduction of her status in the community from pretty high on a pedestal to basically prostitute is immediate. her whole family is going to feel it and it will change everything for them. hal goes wherever he goes and will continue as he had been before, and these women will be changed forever. (such a double standard.) in picnic it's not much different, except that madge can start a life elsewhere and so maybe the very public fall won't follow her quite as much, and theoretically won't fall on her family. i'm not sure that's really true in this society though, but it does seem like even if she ends up an "old maid" like rosemary, that at least she wouldn't be considered only as someone to sleep with, like rosemary. but here, in summer brave, madge's life is utterly ruined. because of one indiscretion. and probably her mother's life, too. millie might be lucky since she has a scholarship to college, so maybe she gets away from this, but madge and flo have no recourse. this one night will define madge's life, and if she wants to be with men again, she will be used for her body and thrown away.

ugh the sexual repression and double standard of this time is awful. the boys all get to want to sleep with madge and then the second she sleeps with someone, she is completely shamed for it and her worth goes to the gutter.

"It ain't fair, a gal as good-lookin' as you, not given' a guy a break. It ain't fair." the incels of the 50s.

this play, and picnic, too, is terrifically sad. it's what drew me to it in the first place. but the way we are willing, as a society, to throw women's lives away, and to control them, is hitting a little too close to home right now. this is outdated but remains really powerful. and i'm still impressed that a man was writing so poignantly about the way society treats women and poorer people back in the 50's. (4 stars)

from oct 2019:
it's so interesting to read what is basically a rewrite of picnic and see what he changed and what he left in. it really highlights what he thought was the strength of the original, and where he either wanted to change the story or tried something different to get his point across. academically, it was super interesting to read them back to back and compare them.

i understand (from the paragraph or two he uses to explain it) that he was unhappy with the ending of picnic which was forced upon him as he had to both finish the play quickly for broadway production, and that the director wanted either a happy ending, or at least one that was ambiguous enough to not be overtly sad. inge preferred the clear-cut ruinous ending, which i can appreciate.

actually, though, i felt like the ending of picnic wasn't ambiguous. i read it the way he apparently wanted me to - that it was full of disappointment and sadness. (and i remember feeling it was tragic when i saw the production.) but it's more of a personal sadness, one that i expect madge to carry with her, as she arrives in tulsa and hal is either not there or does not take up with her. the ending in summer brave is a more public sadness, as madge has to live in this town with this new reputation that she'll never be able to shake. even rosemary has managed to win the prize of marriage and "escape" but because of one night, madge will be ruined and stuck and it is likely that her family will be, too. (well, millie already won the scholarship to college, so maybe she gets out.)

i understand that because madge never leaves in this rendition, that he took out all the references to the train whistle and how it represents a fresh start, a new place, more opportunity. he must have thought that if madge felt that way about the possibility, that she never would have stayed. but it's too bad, i think, because it's actually sadder a story (and more powerful) if she felt that way, but also felt too stuck to be able to leave. but also, it's too bad because i felt like those moments in the play (picnic, that is) were some of the most poignant and it's a shame to have removed them.

in general, though, this felt a little tighter. he left in the important scenes (both of rosemary's - when she goes off on hal, showing her insecurity and desperation; and when she pushes howard into marriage, also showing her insecurity and desperation) that really drive home the messaging. but the rest of the play seemed a little more developed. (somehow it's the exact same number of pages, though, when it really feels like there's more happening in this one.)

i'm not clear on the title or what he's getting at with it. also at one point he repeats the exact same line (flo asks rosemary if she'll be there for lunch and she says she's going to the hotel for the new teacher gathering; about 2 or 3 pages later flo asks again, and rosemary answers the same. that should have easily been edited.) another difference was that this seemed more obviously written by a man, although except for a couple of quotes i really can't tell why i feel that way.

still, this was a fun experience and i really liked reading both plays. i think i probably like the other ending better, but not because it's happy (it isn't) like most people think. because it's about personal pain versus public humiliation. very powerful either way and both are excellent.

"A woman's life ... whether she's pretty or not ... never means anything to her till it means something to someone else."

men feeling entitled to women's bodies isn't a new thing: "It ain't fair, a gal as good-lookin' as you, not givin' a guy a break. It ain't fair." (4 stars) show less

it's so interesting to read what is basically a rewrite of picnic and see what he changed and what he left in. it really highlights what he thought was the strength of the original, and where he either wanted to change the story or tried something different to get his point across. academically, it was super interesting to read them back to back and compare them.

i understand (from the paragraph or two he uses to explain it) that he was unhappy with the ending of picnic which was forced upon show more him as he had to both finish the play quickly for broadway production, and that the director wanted either a happy ending, or at least one that was ambiguous enough to not be overtly sad. inge preferred the clear-cut ruinous ending, which i can appreciate.

actually, though, i felt like the ending of picnic wasn't ambiguous. i read it the way he apparently wanted me to - that it was full of disappointment and sadness. (and i remember feeling it was tragic when i saw the production.) but it's more of a personal sadness, one that i expect madge to carry with her, as she arrives in tulsa and hal is either not there or does not take up with her. the ending in summer brave is a more public sadness, as madge has to live in this town with this new reputation that she'll never be able to shake. even rosemary has managed to win the prize of marriage and "escape" but because of one night, madge will be ruined and stuck and it is likely that her family will be, too. (well, millie already won the scholarship to college, so maybe she gets out.)

i understand that because madge never leaves in this rendition, that he took out all the references to the train whistle and how it represents a fresh start, a new place, more opportunity. he must have thought that if madge felt that way about the possibility, that she never would have stayed. but it's too bad, i think, because it's actually sadder a story (and more powerful) if she felt that way, but also felt too stuck to be able to leave. but also, it's too bad because i felt like those moments in the play (picnic, that is) were some of the most poignant and it's a shame to have removed them.

in general, though, this felt a little tighter. he left in the important scenes (both of rosemary's - when she goes off on hal, showing her insecurity and desperation; and when she pushes howard into marriage, also showing her insecurity and desperation) that really drive home the messaging. but the rest of the play seemed a little more developed. (somehow it's the exact same number of pages, though, when it really feels like there's more happening in this one.)

i'm not clear on the title or what he's getting at with it. also at one point he repeats the exact same line (flo asks rosemary if she'll be there for lunch and she says she's going to the hotel for the new teacher gathering; about 2 or 3 pages later flo asks again, and rosemary answers the same. that should have easily been edited.) another difference was that this seemed more obviously written by a man, although except for a couple of quotes i really can't tell why i feel that way.

still, this was a fun experience and i really liked reading both plays. i think i probably like the other ending better, but not because it's happy (it isn't) like most people think. because it's about personal pain versus public humiliation. very powerful either way and both are excellent.

"A woman's life ... whether she's pretty or not ... never means anything to her till it means something to someone else."

men feeling entitled to women's bodies isn't a new thing: "It ain't fair, a gal as good-lookin' as you, not givin' a guy a break. It ain't fair." show less