Word: shebas
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Among the other winners: Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer for "distinguished" performances in Come Back, Little Sheba (TIME, Feb. 27), Actor-Manager Maurice Evans for producing the New York City Theater Company's winter season...
Come Back, Little Sheba (by William Inge; produced by the Theatre Guild) tells of a couple, married for 20 years, who should never have married at all. Doc had gotten Lola into trouble; afterwards the baby died, and the sexy, good-natured, empty-headed girl turned into a shiftless housewife, her mind on men, her thoughts in the past. Doc wound up not a doctor, but a chiropractor, and (until Alcoholics Anonymous took over) a drunk. His career blighted, his emotions blunted, he half sleepwalks through life. Then, discovering that their college-girl boarder is turning, like Lola, into...
...Come Back, Little Sheba is not a very good, or even a very interesting, play. It makes plain enough what it wants to do, but never actually does it, never communicates the awful internal bleeding of mismated lives, the blundering wastefulness of life itself. Possibly Lola is too shallow to allow of much probing. But the more complicated, frustrated Doc does need-to be probed. For one thing, is he the tragic victim of a single mistake, or a weak man almost bound to fail? Playwright Inge tends to substitute mere sympathy for insight, and to employ those little touches...
...does not feel that the audience will be able to understand his theme, and therefore he supplies us with this all-enclosing, but unnecessary analogy. Fortunately this comparison is packaged into two short lumps, that of the first scene and one in the last in which she sees that Sheba is dead and her husband Sidney Blackmer (her present life) is taking its place. Because of this condensation however, interest in the play itself is diminished...
...Come Back Little Sheba" in its present form does not have the polish necessary for complete success. However, because of Mr. Inge's valiant attempt and the superb acting of the players it offers a very intriguing production...