MISERY, MARRIAGE, AND A MIDWEST
LIVING ROOM THAT CAN’T HOLD IT ALL

A powerhouse pairing turns Inge’s domestic ache
into something bruising, intimate, and hard to shake

It may be the season of love, but the zeitgeist in Chicago theatre seems to be the season of miserable couplings. There’s Strindberg at Steppenwolf and Court; Ibsen at Remy Bumppo; even Goodman’s delightful Holiday, beneath all that witty banter, paints a grim portrait of marriage and courtship between the classes. But none of those unhappy pairings can even approach the level of marital misery that envelops Doc and Lola Delaney in William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, now on stage at American Blues Theater.

Philip Earl Johnson, G. Whiteside

The period is the 1950s, and in Shayna Patel’s modest but evocative set, the audience is seated on sofas and armchairs in the living room of the Delaneys’ small house in an unnamed Midwestern town. The house is a mess. Laundry—both clean and dirty—is everywhere. The living room occasionally doubles as a formal dining area because the house’s dining room has been repurposed into a second bedroom, currently occupied by a young lodger.

Ethan Serpan, Philip Earl Johnson, Maya Lou Hlava, G. Whiteside

There’s not much of a plot here: Doc and Lola are a middle-aged married couple, more or less forced into marriage in their late teens because of a solitary youthful indiscretion. A series of bad financial decisions follows—two people too young and ill-equipped to deal with the practicalities of married life. Doc drops out of medical school and settles for being a chiropractor. Lola loses her baby and adopts a puppy (the titular Sheba), who subsequently runs away. Doc squanders his inheritance, takes up alcohol, then gives it up with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. Along the way, they are mostly cut off by their respective families, increasingly isolated, and descend into near financial ruin, forced to take in a lodger to help make ends meet. All this is preamble, and breakfast with the lodger, Marie, is where we come in.

G. Whiteside & William Rose II

Marie is the agent of chaos in the Delaneys’ present life of quiet, routine despair: a free-spirited college student with a long-distance boyfriend, Bruce, who is marriage material, and a local vainglorious athlete, Turk, who is not. Her effect on Lola and Doc is drastically different. Lola lives vicariously through Marie, taking genuine joy in her active love life and encouraging it—both overtly and tacitly—while she beams in approval. Doc, on the other hand, takes a superficially paternal tack with Marie, increasingly protective and restrictive, but there’s a strong undercurrent of desire and resentment. And there’s nothing subtle about his hatred for Turk; after all, unlike with him and Lola, these two young people blithely indulge in their impulses without being punished for them.

Joslyn Jones

These are all tricky parts to play. As in most Inge plays, so little is expressed openly until things finally come to a head. The supporting cast is rather fine, although the three younger actors in the Turk (Ethan Surpan) / Marie (Maya Lou Hlava) / Bruce (Justin Banks) love triangle have trouble settling on the right tone for their characters. They’re never less than good, but all three performances could use some fine-tuning, which will no doubt happen through the run.

Philip Earl Johnson

And then we have our two masters. Philip Earl Johnson gives an incredibly layered and subtle performance as the former alcoholic Doc Delaney (aside: let’s take a second to note the astounding cruelty of giving someone a nickname that reminds them of their biggest failure every waking moment of their life). Johnson’s Doc is a study in control. Every movement is carefully executed, and his voice is gentle and measured. But watch closely, and you’ll catch the tremor in moments of emotion, the flashes of anger in his eyes and voice, all building so that his inevitable deterioration and explosion is not a matter of if, but when. The performance might even be a little too subtle at times; his sublimated desire for Marie and sexual jealousy doesn’t quite come through at first—his is a face made for a screen close-up—and the initial low energy of the character tends to drag the pace early on. It also explains Hlava’s hyper take on Marie in the first few scenes; that energy has to come from somewhere. But complaining about an actor’s subtlety is possibly the most minor quibble one could have.

G. Whiteside & Cisco Lopez

All props to Johnson’s talents aside, Sheba is really a showcase for the actor playing Lola (not for nothing did Shirley Booth pick up a Tony in the original Broadway cast, and an Oscar for the film adaptation), and Gwendolyn Whiteside is magnificent. Painting a devastating portrait of untreated depression and crippling loneliness, her Lola is a nattering bundle of decency who overshares every chance she gets and forces people into conversations—conversations that inevitably elicit small moments of kindness from strangers, almost in spite of themselves. While Doc turns inward to deal with his unhappiness, Lola reaches out. Whiteside’s performance is also one of the most effective depictions of a victim of domestic abuse I’ve seen on stage, and her reactions to the occasional slips in Doc’s mask—God, these two are so phenomenal together, it makes me want to cry—do much to shift the tenor of the play as it moves along.

Maya Lou Hlava, G. Whiteside, Ethan Serpan

As adamantly opposed as I am to trigger warnings, there were moments here when I genuinely hoped there weren’t any survivors of abuse in the audience.

Zack Shultz, Joslyn Jones, Philip Earl Johnson, & William Rose II

Director Elyse Dolan wisely keeps out of the way of the two actors, focusing on efficiently moving the parts around and setting the scene for the shattering conclusion. Aided by excellent violence movement (R&D Choreography), the breakdown is masterfully directed, incorporating the entire theatrical space and eliciting gasps and small screams from the audience—my physical recoil from the action was so sharp that I hit the back of my head on the wall of the theatre.

Philip Earl Johnson, G. Whiteside, Maya Lou Hlava

The last play I watched at American Blues Theater was the gloriously messy Things With Friends. I adored that production, flaws and all, because it was so alive and teeming with new ideas and concepts. I confess that my first reaction to the announcement of Sheba was, “Ugh, that old chestnut,” but I underestimated the company and did a disservice to the play itself. This is a powerful drama that cuts deep; it’s easy to recommend and difficult to watch, but watch it, you must.

G. Whiteside, Maya Lou Hlava, Justin Banks

As the dust begins to settle on Doc’s breakdown, unable to look at Johnson’s face twisted in torment, his screams echoing around the room, I focused on Lola, sitting in an armchair, unable to contain her tears, trying to put her shoes back on—trying to hold on to some semblance of dignity in the presence of strangers and friends as she prepares to return to the status quo she knows will only last until the next time.

Does a more unhappy marriage exist on the stage?

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photos by Michael Brosilow

Come Back, Little Sheba
American Blues Theater
Studio Theater, 5627 N Lincoln Ave.
Wed at 2; Thurs-Sat at 7:30; Sat at 3 (Feb. 21 & March 7); Sun at 2:30
90 minutes, no intermission
ends on March 22, 2026
for tickets ($34.50-$109.50), call 773.654.3103 or visit American Blues Theater

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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