Review: Come Back, Little Sheba

Come Back, Little Sheba, William Inge's play about a lonely wife, her alcoholic husband, and their free-spirited boarder, was first produced in 1950 and made into an Oscar-winning film in 1952. The new Broadway revival at the Biltmore features S. Epatha Merkerson in the starring role of Lola.

I've noticed a trend that the plays I have the most problems really connecting with are plays from the early to mid-twentieth century. Plays from this era have enough components of what I'll call "modern" theater that my brain enters that zone, but differ enough that I sometimes get thrown for a loop. The main example of this in Sheba is the final scene; specifically, that it exists at all. The scene before contained multiple spiraling climaxes, followed by a beautifully acted, subtle, ambivalent denoument that in twenty-first century play would have been the obvious place to end. However, being written, as it was, in the forties, William Inge apparently thought there should be more resolution. The last scene is hardly bad, but it is unnecessary and was in some ways less fulfilling than the ambivalent ending would have been, contradiction though that seems. In many smaller ways, too, the show seems forced, overly convenient. Too many things just happen to occur on the days the audience is tuned in to the family; it's as if, in many ways, the people lived in a vacuum before the play opens.

However, the weaknesses in the writing are more than overcome by the strengths. The husband and the boarder, who seem on the surface to share many of the traits of classically perfect TV characters of the fifties, have deep imperfections hiding just below their perfect facades. When their faults aline in just the right way, the disaster that unfolds is disturbing and powerful. It is only the wife Lola - lonely, confused, uncertain, boring, bored, and stuck completely in the past - that is honest with herself, the other characters, and the audience. She makes no attempt to hide or gloss over the pathetic nature of her life and by embracing it, makes it somehow graceful. Over and over I found myself cringing at the sad, pitiful life she lived, but by the end, I loved her and wept for her. S. Epatha Merkerson's performance is fantastic, and definitely worthy of a Tony nomination.

This show did not make me happy. It was dark, depressing, and imperfectly written and paced. I did, however, come out thinking about the characters and the play, analyzing and wondering, which is more than I can say for a lot of theater. For that reason, I'll say that it is worth the student rush price, if you have some free time. It's not a contender for best play of the year, or even best revival (I thought Pygmalion and The Homecoming were both superior), but it is a play worth seeing.