COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA: a story of marital frustration which erupts in violence. Doc and Lola had an indiscreet affair, she became pregnant and, compelled to marry her, he gave up his medical studies, forfeited his future and settled down to a life of quiet desperation with the simple, homey Lola, who lost the child but has remained Doc's steadfast if slatternly wife. Now a chiropractor and recovering alcoholic, Doc's sobriety is tested when Marie, a young college student becomes their boarder bringing new life and long-dormant hostilities to the surface of Doc and Lola's troubled marriage. PICNIC: Takes place on Labor day Weekend in the joint backyards of two middle-aged widows. The one house belongs to Flo Owens, who lives there with her two maturing daughters, Madge and Millie, and a boarder who is a spinster school teacher. The other house belongs to Helen Potts, who lives with her elderly and invalid mother. Into this female atmosphere comes a young man named Hal Carter, whose animal vitality seriously upsets the entire group. Hal is a most interesting character, a child of parents who ignored him, self-conscious of his failings and his position behind the eight ball. Flo is sensitively wary of temptations for her daughters. Madge, bored with being only a beauty, sacrifices her chances for a wealthy marriage for the excitement Hal promises. Her sister, Millie, finds her balance for the first time through the stranger's brief attention. And the spinster is stirred to make an issue out of the dangling courtship that has brightened her life in a dreary, minor way. BUS STOP: In the middle of a howling snowstorm, a bus out of Kansas City pulls up at a cheerful roadside diner. All roads are blocked, and four or five weary travelers are going to have to hole up until morning. Cherie, a nightclub chanteuse in a sparkling gown and a seedy fur-trimmed jacket, is the passenger with most to worry about. She's been pursued, made love to and finally kidnapped by a twenty-one-year-old cowboy with a ranch of his own and the romantic methods of an unusually headstrong bull. The belligerent cowhand is right behind her, ready to sling her over his shoulder and carry her, alive and kicking, all the way to Montana. Even as she's ducking out from under his clumsy but confident embraces, and screeching at him fiercely to shut him up, she pauses to furrow her forehead and muse, "Somehow deep inside of me I got a funny feeling I'm gonna end up in Montana à" As a counterpoint to the main romance, the proprietor of the cafe and the bus driver at last find time to develop a friendship of their own; a middle-age scholar comes to terms with himself; and a young girl who works in the cafe also gets her first taste of romance. THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS: The setting is a small Oklahoma town in the early 1920s and the home of the Flood family. Here we find Rubin, a traveling salesman for a harness firm, Cora, his sensitive and lovely wife, Sonny, their little boy and Reenie, their teenage daughter. The plot consists of a series of short stories — the fight between a husband and wife; the fear of an overly shy young girl on going to a dance; the problems of an introverted little boy who feels that the whole world is against him; the corroding marriage of Cora's rowdy sister; and the tragedy of a military school cadet who suffers from the stigma of being a Jew in an alien community. The play's message is that there is dark at the top of everyone's stairs, but that it can be dissipated by understanding, tolerance and compassion.

Come back, Little Sheba --Picnic -- Bus stop -- The dark at the top of the stairs.