Come Back, Little Sheba at American Blues Theater
Set in a Midwestern home where the past is always hovering just over the present, Inge’s drama follows Lola and Doc—a couple shaped by long-ago choices and the quiet weight of disappointment—until the arrival of a young college boarder, Marie, jolts their fragile routines and exposes what they’ve been trying not to say out loud. Inge wrote the play in 1950, but the story’s emotional pressure cooker still lands with a startling immediacy, especially in a space designed for intimacy.Dolan is staging the work as an immersive theatrical experience designed to bring audiences into close contact with the emotional intensity of Inge's characters. "I'm excited to surprise and thrill audiences with our intimate, immersive, in-your-face production. Though written 75 years ago, Inge's characters and their struggles—loss, addiction, infertility, loneliness—are still deeply relevant today," she notes.
The cast includes several American Blues Theater Ensemble members: Philip Earl Johnson, Joslyn Jones, and Gwendolyn Whiteside, who also serves as the company's Executive Artistic Director. They'll be joined by Artistic Affiliates Maya Hlava, Cisco Lopez, and William Anthony Sebastian Rose II.
If you love actor-forward realism and the kind of storytelling that feels like it’s happening inches away, this “Sheba” promises an electric, uncomfortably human evening—exactly the kind of theatre that stays with you on the ride home.