Come Back, Little Sheba

Another old one of a play still running...

Come Back Little Sheba
Play written by William Inge
January 29, 2008, 8:00pm
Och P 115
Biltmore Theatre

I almost don't know how to review this play without either a) giving everything away or b) making it sound like an absolute waste of time. For starters, there isn't much to give away, at least not in act 1, and in act 2, when you figure something *has* to happen, you know what it's going to be. As for it being a waste of time, it can feel that way in act 1, when you're watching Lola (S. Epatha Merkerson) flittering about, getting into everyone's business because she is so desperately, heart-achingly lonely, telling everyone how proud she is of her alcoholic husband (almost a year dry!--you'll laugh, and you'll feel bad about it) and, at night, she goes out on the porch and calls for her little dog Sheba to come home. Well, based on this you can guess what will happen in Act 2 (and it won't be the dog coming home.)

The catalyst is Marie (Zoe Kazan), the perky young boarder Lola and her husband Doc (Kevin Anderson) are renting their extra room to. She's the white-version of Lola as a teenager, and Lola soaks in every bit of her youthful exploits. Doc has an affection for the girl, too, but is he taking the connection a bit further and wondering how things would have been different for him if he'd married in his own race? (The casting of Ms. Merkerson in a typically caucasion role throws a whole new level onto the play.) Marie is always likeable, and completely oblivious to the turmoil she is stirring up among her hosts. Her actions lead to Doc seeing something that interferes with his faith in Marie's innocence and sends him to the bottle. What happens next, both in Lola's reactions, her fear and loss, and Doc's violence, uncapped with the whiskey, seeps from the tense honesty of a writer who understood such moments. After Doc is removed from the home, Lola stops, leans against a wall, and the whole audience was with her as she clutched her stomach and *felt* the loss, the pain, the entrapment of her life.

And yet, Come Back Little Sheba ends on an up note. In fact, I would say it ends with a solid infusion of hope. Tiny acts of kindness from strangers charmed by Lola's interest in their lives. A husband coming home sober. A wife taking the time to put some care into herself. A perky young boarder sent on her merry way with a brand new fiancee. And scrambled eggs.