WITH MORE and more theater companies vying for time in the area's limited playing spaces, off-night productions are an increasingly popular, if imperfect, solution. Too often, guest companies have to compromise their set and lighting designs to fit the host's configuration no matter how...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (BILTMORE THEATER; 650 SEATS; $91.50 TOP) NEW YORK A Manhattan Theater Club presentation of a play in two acts by William Inge. Directed by Michael Pressman. Set, James Noone; costumes, Jennifer yon Mayrhauser; lighting, Jane...

Keith Anderson will play Doc to S. Epatha Merkerson's Lola in the Manhattan Theatre club revival of William Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba," opening Jan. 24 at the Biltmore Theatre.In "Sheba," Lola, a blowzy, lonely Midwest housewife, is trapped in an unhappy marriage to Doc,...

A monster and a mermaid would seem to have the new musical market cornered on Broadway this fall, but it is plays rather than musicals that _ surprisingly _ are dominating the first half of the season."The lineup of production for the fall season should...

Though essentially naturalistic, Mr. Inge's plays generate a mood of intense Freudian pressures that gives them overtones of poetry. His favorite theme is sex, his favorite thesis that it causes problems. His first Broadway hit, Come Back, Little Sheba, produced in 1950, explored the consequences of what used to be called a "shotgun wedding." (p. 97) As is usually true of Mr. Inge's plays, the secondary characters in this one are flat and unconvincing, but, because of the honesty...