Other editions of book Four Plays: Come Back Little Sheba; Picnic; Bus Stop; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Beginning in 1950, William Inge achieved four consecutive Broadway successes with the plays in this volume, which gained even greater audiences as motion pictures. Come Back, Little Sheba concerns itself with the near-tragic crisis in the lives of an alcoholic and his wife; Picnic deals with the effects of the arrival of a vagabond on a group of women in a small Kansas town; Bus Stop centers on a group of people stranded in a small café; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs presents a somber picture of a family haunted by unfocused fears and prejudices.Includes:'Come Back, Little Sheba''Picnic''Bus Stop''The Dark at the Top of the Stairs'

'Inge has presented with astounding veracity the oppressive banality of the lives of his characters: the events of their lives have the nerve-lightening regularity of a dripping faucet. His female characters especially are engulfed by the bathos of their lives, and Inge capitalizes on this fact in order to heighten dramatically the moment of personal crisis which comes to each of them. In his four major successes--Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic; Bus Stop; and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs--the play carries the audience through the moment of crisis; and the final curtain falls upon a note of hope and fulfillment.'--R. Baird Shuman