In ‘Sheba,’ despair eclipses a marriage

In case you’re wondering why there haven’t been many major revivals of William Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,” two words should clear up the mystery: Shirley Booth. The performances she gave on Broadway in 1950 and on film in 1952 -- winning both a Tony and an Oscar -- sealed the deal. No reason for anyone to compete with that kind of blowsy perfection.

For much of the new production of the play that opened Sunday at the Kirk Douglas Theatre under the direction of Michael Pressman, the wisdom of this decision was confirmed. No one awaited S. Epatha Merkerson’s portrayal of Lola, the lazybones housewife married to the recovering alcoholic Doc, more eagerly than I did. A great admirer of her stage work, I welcome any furlough from her long-running engagement as Lt. Anita Van Buren on “Law & Order” that brings her back to the theater, where she equally belongs. But to put the matter in a nutshell, there seemed too wide a gulf between her bright, independent snappiness and the character’s stunted neediness.

Still, one should never question the judgment of a performer as canny as Merkerson. When the pathos clobberingly arrives, as it inevitably does with Inge, all thoughts of Booth fall by the wayside, as Merkerson makes the role utterly her own. It takes a while, but you come to understand the emotional fragility and cornered, mute complexity that drew her to play a woman who seems so limited and dull-witted when she’s calling her husband “Daddy,” prancing around her newspaper-strewn living room to the radio and spying on her flirty college-coed boarder’s busy love life.

Set in an unnamed Midwestern town, “Come Back, Little Sheba” plays today like a period piece, a time-capsule drama of Freudian Americana in which the exposition is as heavy-handed as the subtext is heavy-breathing. Inge, a closeted homosexual whose chronic depression eventually led to his suicide, could be described as our dramatist of erotic discontent. Like Tennessee Williams, the friend and onetime lover to whom he was often punishingly compared, he was lured by loneliness and libidinous despair.

Roiling with phallic imagery (including javelins, broom handles and an infamous hatchet), “Come Back, Little Sheba” invites you not only to psychoanalyze its characters but to put the playwright on the couch as well. Yet the gash from which Inge’s inspiration bled was anything but phony -- and his woundedness still has a way of touching our own. You might violently disagree with this judgment if you stay just for the cumbersome first act, which sets up the psychological and plot mechanics with the subtlety of a rubber mallet. Doc (Alan Rosenberg), a chiropractor who’s working his steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, doesn’t seem to have much in common anymore with his wife, who has let herself go in middle age. Theirs was a forced marriage that resulted in a miscarriage and a fate of childlessness. Lola, noted once for her swell looks, can’t figure out what to do with herself. Mops and buckets don’t hold any allure for her, and the radio isn’t much fun when there isn’t anyone to dance with.

At times of despondency, Lola opens the kitchen door and cries out for Sheba, the dog that’s been haunting her dreams ever since it vanished. Thank heavens she has Marie (an ebullient Jenna Gavigan) on hand to keep her distracted. An art student who rents the spare bedroom, this perky young woman enjoys sketching the male physique, which is fine and dandy as far as ogling Lola is concerned. In fact, she can’t get enough of the romantic soap opera her boarder is enacting under her own roof.

Doc, who seems a bit tantalized himself, doesn’t like the way his wife is abetting their tenant’s looseness. Turk (Josh Cooke, in a gamely comic turn), a local jock who’s always hanging around, is permitted to come and go as he pleases -- with or without his clothes on. And when a telegram arrives from Bruce (Bill Heck), the man Marie intends ultimately to marry, Lola steams it open for her own delectation and proposes to have an elaborate dinner party in his honor.

Rosenberg’s portrayal is too dour to spotlight the frustrated sexuality that Burt Lancaster brought to the role on-screen. Here, the fury precipitating Doc’s falling off the wagon seems more like moral disgust at his wife’s laxity than repressed desire for Marie. Somber and slow-moving, Rosenberg’s Doc could be an advertisement for Prozac were it not for his retro clothes. What you take away from his performance is the regret of marrying young, when looks and charm outweigh character compatibility. But unfortunately, he’s not just operating on a low flame -- his pilot light seems to have gone out.

If there was once a great passion between Doc and Lola, there aren’t many vestiges of it left. Nor is there much theatrical chemistry between Rosenberg and Merkerson, who don’t exactly seem bonded to each other for better or worse.

Race, by the way, isn’t an issue. Although the play unfolds at a time (unspecified, though probably the late ‘40s) when interracial marriage was something that wouldn’t have been overlooked, one accepts the casting of an African American actress and white actor in the roles. The trouble is, Merkerson is just too smart for the situation. You half expect her to stand up and say, “What the heck am I doing sitting around all day fretting about this man and that bottle of booze in the cupboard?” She seems unnaturally constrained, and her flirtatious interactions with the postman and milkman aren’t so much a necessary outlet for her character’s neurotic energy as a contrivance forced upon her by the play.

Lola and Doc’s house, designed with a messy exactitude by James Noone, sometimes seems more convincing than the couple occupying it. But all that changes when the story takes a sharp turn from comedy to near-tragedy in the second act, and you get a glimpse of the real wreckage of their marriage -- a deadness that will neither go away nor allow them to separate.

After his alcoholic rampage and collapse, Rosenberg’s Doc throbs with anguish and remorse, while Merkerson silently registers the suffering of a wife with no options. Lola can take better care of her house -- something her stoical neighbor Mrs. Coffman (the excellent Brenda Wehle) exhorts her to do. But she can’t pretend that her girlhood fantasies of conventional happiness will ever come true.

Inge might strike us as old-fashioned, but he shows us domestic heartbreak at its searing, timeless worst. Sheba isn’t coming back, and Merkerson lets you feel the weight of that loss.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

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‘Come Back, Little Sheba’

Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Exceptions: 8:30 p.m. July 12, dark July 5.

Ends: July 15

Price: $20 to $50

Contact: (213) 628-2772, www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

Running Time: 2 hours

S. Epatha Merkerson...Lola

Alan Rosenberg...Doc

Jenna Gavigan...Marie

Josh Cooke...Turk

Bill Heck...Bruce

Brenda Wehle...Mrs. Coffman

Matthew J. Williamson...Milkman

Lyle Kanouse...Postman

By William Inge. Directed by Michael Pressman, Scenic design by James Noone. Lighting design by Jane Cox. Costume design by Jennifer von Mayrhauser. Sound design by Cricket S. Myers. Original music by Peter Golub. Production stage manager David S. Franklin.