When the play was done on Broadway in 1959 the cast included a young Warren Beatty, who won a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor. Also in that cast were Betty Field, Michael J. Pollard, Robert Webber and Carol Haney.

The current cast is doing a fine job expressing the lifelike characters in Inge’s drama set in a small town outside of Kansas City during the depression years. Especially poignant is Jean Lichty giving a memorable performance as the troubled Lila Green, who is somewhat like the Tennessee Williams creation, Blanche DuBois. Lichty is both colorful and deeply moving as the conflicted woman who arrives at the home of widow Helen Baird, for whom she has done household chores in the past and now is being invited to stay for a while.

Living with Mrs. Baird, wonderfully portrayed by Deborah Hedwall, is her son Kenny, an excellent Ben Kahre. The mother-son relationship is incisively explored by the playwright. Kenny doesn’t want to settle for an ordinary job, and just into his twenties, he is restless and enjoys drinking and going out with loose women he can find. His mother harps on him to get a proper job and there is tension between them, later in the play revealed as partly an outgrowth of the loss of her husband. Kenny’s mother is clinging to the past, and she keeps her life steady by being a church-going woman bolstered by her sense of morality.

To no surprise, when the attractive Lila, who talks of having worked as an actress, enters the scene there is bound to be trouble. Kenny is drawn to her as she is ultimately drawn to him, despite her being considerably older and having a past that has been devastating, adding up to more than a young guy could possibly handle. She reveals that she has been institutionalized for a period for her emotional problems. She had a bad marriage with apparent abuse by her former father-in-law. Now a boyfriend shows up with a plan for a well-paying job, but she is outraged when she finds out it involves acting in porn movies.

Although Lila at first fends off Kenny, his avowal of love for her and implied promises of marriage lead her to have sex with him. When the next morning he realizes that he is in over his head and isn’t ready for commitment, she is shattered by this betrayal, and in combination with what her boyfriend intends for her, the situation is doubly painful to her, made worse given her basic emotional instability. Lichty, bringing out the acuity of Inge’s writing, makes Lila likable as well as vulnerable, with the result that we feel her pain and worry about her fate.