Come Back, Little Sheba (play)

Last updated
Come Back, Little Sheba
Written by William Inge
Date premiered1950 (1950)
Place premiered Westport Country Playhouse

Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1950 play by the American dramatist William Inge. Inge wrote the play while he was a teacher at Washington University in St. Louis.

Contents

Plot

Set in the Midwestern house of Lola and Doc Delaney, the plot centers on how their life is disrupted by the presence of a boarder, Marie, a college art student who has a keen interest in the young men around her.

Middle-aged Lola engages in mild flirtations with the milkman and the mailman. She sees in Marie a younger version of herself and encourages her pursuit of her hometown boyfriend, the wealthy Bruce, but also her classmate, the athletic Turk.

Doc, a chiropractor, abandoned a different career in medicine when he married a pregnant Lola, who subsequently lost the baby.

A recovering alcoholic, Doc maintains a precarious sobriety. To him, Marie represents youth and opportunities long gone; seeing her with Turk brings out resentments against Lola for ruining his life. Ultimately these feelings cause him to fall off the wagon, and act violently toward Lola. Frightened, she calls Doc's Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, who comes to collect Doc and take him to a state asylum where he can be sobered up. When he comes back four days later, Marie has married Bruce and left, and he and Lola reconcile.

The title refers to Lola's missing dog, who disappeared before the play's opening and remains gone throughout the story. Lola hopes for the puppy's return throughout the play by calling "Come back, little Sheba" daily from the front door, but eventually faces reality and gives up on Sheba's return.

Productions

The play premiered at the Westport Country Playhouse. Presented by the Theatre Guild and directed by Daniel Mann, the first Broadway production premiered at the Booth Theatre on February 15, 1950, and ran 190 performances. The opening night cast included Shirley Booth as Lola, Sidney Blackmer as Doc, and Joan Lorring as Marie. Booth won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, and Blackmer won Best Actor.

Reprising her Broadway role, Booth starred opposite Burt Lancaster as Doc and Terry Moore as Marie in a 1952 film adaptation. Booth won both the 1953 Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Actress - Drama Golden Globe for her portrayal of Lola.

In 1974, Clint Ballard Jr. and Lee Goldsmith adapted the play for the musical stage. Kaye Ballard portrayed Lola in the Chicago tryout, but the production never reached Broadway as planned. In 2001, it was revived under the title Come Back, Little Sheba at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, with Donna McKechnie as Lola. A recording of this production was released by Original Cast Records. [1]

A 1977 television version starred Laurence Olivier as Doc, Joanne Woodward as Lola, and Carrie Fisher as Marie. Granada Television produced the film as part of its Laurence Olivier Presents anthology series. In 2006, Acorn Media released the film as part of a DVD set with six other productions from the series.

In 1984, the Roundabout Theatre Company mounted an Off Broadway revival, directed by Paul Weidner and starring Shirley Knight as Lola, Philip Bosco as Doc, Mia Dillon as Marie, Steven Weber as Bruce, and Kevin Conroy as Turk. [2] In his review in Time, William A. Henry III observed: "Like all of Inge's best plays, Sheba is slight of plot but musky with atmosphere...Middle age is portrayed as a time of aching sexual frustration, made more acute by the close-at-hand vision of youth...Inge did not transform his characters: they end where they began. But he understood them. In their interplay was genuine life, often blunted but ever resilient". [3]

A Broadway revival of the Inge play opened on January 24, 2008, at the Biltmore Theatre. Directed by Michael Pressman, it starred S. Epatha Merkerson as Lola, Kevin Anderson as Doc, and Zoe Kazan as Marie, and ran through March 16. [4] In his review for The New York Times, Ben Brantley called it a "deeply felt revival" and a "revitalizing production of a play often dismissed as a soggy period piece" and added "Ms. Merkerson allows a kind of intimate access traditionally afforded by cinematic close-ups, when the camera finds shades of meaning in impassive faces. She rarely signals what Lola's feeling; she just seems to feel, and we get it, instantly and acutely. Such emotional sincerity is the hallmark of this revival from the Manhattan Theater Club, directed with gentle compassion by Michael Pressman and featuring first-rate performances from Kevin Anderson and Zoe Kazan. The production's commitment to its characters uncovers surprising virtues in William Inge's play". [5]

In 2017, the Transport Group put up a production Come Back, Little Sheba, which won the Obie Award for performance by Heather MacRae. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Booth</span> American actress (1898–1992)

Shirley Booth was an American actress. One of 24 performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, Booth was the recipient of an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards.

<i>Come Back, Little Sheba</i> (1952 film) 1952 film by Daniel Mann

Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1952 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann in his directorial debut and produced by Paramount Pictures. The script was adapted by Ketti Frings from the 1950 play of the same title by William Inge. Starring Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore, and Richard Jaeckel, the film tells the story of a marriage between a recovering alcoholic and his frumpy wife, which is rocked when a young college student rents a room in the couple's house. The title refers to the wife's little dog that disappeared months before the story begins and whom she still openly grieves for. Booth, who had originated her role on Broadway and was making her film debut, won Best Actress honors at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

<i>Sweet Bird of Youth</i> 1959 play by Tennessee Williams

Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams that tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago, whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is to get back what he had in his youth, primarily, his old girlfriend, whose father had run him out of town years before. The play was written for Tallulah Bankhead, a good friend of Williams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Inge</span> American playwright and novelist (1913–1973)

William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, including Picnic, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".

<i>Shirley Valentine</i> Play

Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S. Epatha Merkerson</span> American actress (born 1952)

S. Epatha Merkerson is an American actress. She has received accolades for her work, including an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, four NAACP Image Awards, two Obie Awards, and two Tony Award nominations. She is known for her portrayal of NYPD Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on the NBC police procedural drama series Law & Order, a role she played from 1993 to 2010, appearing in 388 episodes of the series. She is also known for playing Reba the Mail Lady on Pee-wee's Playhouse and Sharon Goodwin in the NBC medical drama Chicago Med since the series premiered in November 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Lorring</span> American actress

Joan Lorring was an American actress and singer known for her work in film and theatre. For her role as Bessy Watty in The Corn Is Green (1945), Lorring was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Lorring also originated the role of Marie Buckholder in Come Back, Little Sheba on Broadway in 1950, for which she won a Donaldson Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Sternhagen</span> American actress (1930–2023)

Frances Hussey Sternhagen was an American actress. She was known as a character actress who appeared on- and off-Broadway, in movies, and on television for over six decades. Sternhagen received numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Saturn Award, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austin Pendleton</span> American actor (born 1940)

Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Booth Theatre</span> Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York

The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theater at 222 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1913, the theater was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts in the Italian Renaissance style and was built for the Shubert brothers. The venue was originally operated by Winthrop Ames, who named it for 19th-century American actor Edwin Booth. It has 800 seats across two levels and is operated by The Shubert Organization. The facade and parts of the interior are New York City landmarks.

<i>Picnic</i> (play) Play written by William Inge

Picnic is a 1953 play by William Inge. The play premiered at the Music Box Theatre, Broadway, on 19 February 1953 in a Theatre Guild production, directed by Joshua Logan, which ran for 477 performances.

<i>Come Back, Little Sheba</i> (1977 film) 1977 British TV series or programme

Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1977 videotaped television film production of the play of the same name by William Inge produced by Granada Television as part of the anthology series Laurence Olivier Presents transmitted in the UK by ITV on 1 January 1978. The selected plays were intended to represent "the best" in 20th Century theatre, staged for television. It aired in the United States on NBC on 31 December 1977.

The Time of the Cuckoo is a play by Arthur Laurents. It focuses on the bittersweet romance between Leona Samish, a single American executive secretary vacationing in Europe and Renato Di Rossi, a shopkeeper she meets in Venice. Di Rossi, trapped in a loveless marriage, relentlessly pursues Leona, who initially is shocked by the thought of an illicit affair but eventually succumbs to the Italian's charms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoe Kazan</span> American actress (born 1983)

Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress and writer. She made her acting debut in the film Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later acted in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Ruby Sparks (2012), What If (2013), The Big Sick (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and She Said (2022). She also wrote Ruby Sparks and co-wrote Wildlife (2018) with her partner Paul Dano.

Michael Pressman is an American film and television producer and director.

The Waverly Gallery is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. It is considered a "memory play". The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2000, follows a grandson watching his grandmother slowly die from Alzheimer's disease. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001.

Transport Group Theatre Company is a non-profit, off-Broadway theatre company in New York City that stages new works and revivals of plays and musicals, with a focus on American stories told in a visually progressive way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer von Mayrhauser</span> American costume designer

Jennifer von Mayrhauser is an American costume designer who has designed costumes for more than thirty Broadway productions, and is notable for her significant contributions in film, television, and theatre.

The Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress is an annual award presented jointly by The Village Voice and the American Theatre Wing in recognition of achievements in Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theatre productions in New York City. The awards were established in 1956 by The Village Voice.

The Trip to Bountiful is a play by American playwright Horton Foote. The play premiered March 1, 1953, on NBC-TV, before being produced on the Broadway stage from November 3, 1953, to December 5, 1953.

References

  1. ↑ "Come Back Little Sheba". Original Cast Records. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 2014-04-22. UPC 741117602526
  2. ↑ "Come Back, Little Sheba". Internet Off Broadway Database. Archived from the original on 2015-02-18. Retrieved 2014-04-22.
  3. ↑ Henry, William III (23 July 1984). "Theater: The Laureate of Longing". Time. Archived from the original on January 18, 2005.
  4. ↑ "Come Back, Little Sheba". Internet Broadway Database . Retrieved 2014-04-22.
  5. ↑ Brantley, Ben (January 25, 2008). "So Quiet You Can Hear a Heart Stop". The New York Times . Retrieved April 22, 2014.
  6. ↑ Obie Awards, 2017 Winners Archived 2019-05-07 at the Wayback Machine .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.