There are only a few days left to see the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's "World Premier" production of Shoebox Picnic Road Side: Route One held outdoors [weather permitting] under a peaceful grove near the theatre building.
Deneen Reynolds-Knott' 40-minute play hearkens back to the 1950s. Ramona Ward's finely rendered period costumes, and a soundtrack of popular songs blaring from classic cars complete the picture as a small caravan of an African-American family stops en route between New York City and North Carolina for a roadside picnic; and after the actors/characters "bless the food", a shoebox picnic awaits each audience member.
While this scenario could depict almost any American family in the 1950s, it is clear that, though white people might choose a picnic as an alternative to a restaurant, the characters in this play do so out of necessity to avoid being turned away from a "whites-only" establishment, or worse, to have risked their lives had they tried.
There is no mention of the well-known Greenbook listing safe places for African-Americans to stop, and for the most part, the atmosphere of Ms. Reynolds-Knott's script is comfortably light-hearted, with colloquial dialogue that is disarmingly ordinary; the women share recipes for fried chicken and potato salad and talk about fashion and music icons like Dinah Washington; the men talk about the Brooklyn Dodgers and take friendly digs at the one of them who always arrives late; the children talk about their dreams of the future and don't quite understand why they can't stop at a Howard Johnson's for a clam roll.
The ensemble acting company create recognizably naturalistic characters who appear to be living relatively happy lives -- they banter, gently discipline their children, make plans for a better future -- but underneath all this seeming comfort is a continual and almost undetectable watchfulness. Their parked cars shield them from the public road, there is a real concern for the people in the car that lags behind, their words are guarded when it turns to the subject of race.
There is one moment when car horns are heard from nearby -- a signal probably from white people that they ought to move on -- that causes a well-practiced ritual that positions the men as sentries, and the women distracting the children by bringing them near the cars and protecting them from danger.
Other than that one discomforting moment, there are no incidents to speak of. Audiences have been offered a peek into the characters' lives and can relate to them. We like them; they are good people; their hopes and dreams are ours. We have invested in their lives.
Before they leave, Ms. Reynolds-Knott provides a coda in which the assorted characters break the fourth wall to tell us what happens in their family "five years from now...ten years from now...twenty-five years from now...fifty years from now"; though a lot has been accomplished, and a lot has changed, their journey isn't yet over. So, when they pack up and get back on the road, we miss them and wish them well.
