Gibbs reviews the original Broadway production of Come Back, Little Sheba, awarding plaudits to the cast yet finding Inge' s text short on substance. Despite his mixed feelings, Gibbs still finds several portions of the play fascinating and one scene in particular "genuinely shocking. "

In the last scene of Come Back, Little Sheba, at the Booth, the forty-year-old heroine tells her husband about a dream she had the night before. She was, it seems, a spectator at a track meet, watching the javelin throw. At first, it appeared to her that the star performer was a young athlete who had stirred her powerfully in her waking life, not only by posing for a drawing in his running trunks but also by seducing a pretty student who happened to be boarding in her house. Rapidly, however, he turned into a succession of other young men, whose muscular physiques...