Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
An old-timey small town in Kansas. A young person chafing at its limitations and longing to see the world. A handsome stranger of uncertain moral character who appears as a catalyst for change. These plot elements appear front and center in William Inge’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play, Picnic, and they’re appropriated with fair success by playwright Eric Anderson in his new play Back Porch, a gay love story that turns on one youth’s sexual awakening and his inauguration into the difficult choices maturity may usher in. Read more…
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage
In the new “Back Porch,” a Bluestem production at the Victory Theatre in Burbank, playwright Eric Anderson implicitly suggests how William Inge might have written his hit play “Picnic” (1953) or his subsequent variation on it, “Summer Brave” (1973, just before Inge committed suicide in Hollywood), in an era when he would not have felt compelled to stay in the closet. Read more…