Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The

Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The (1957), a play by William Inge. [Music Box Theatre, 468 perf.] The Floods are a lower‐middle‐class family living in a small Oklahoma town in the 1920s. Rubin Flood ( Pat Hingle) is a harness salesman at a time when automobiles are killing the demand for his product. His wife, Cora ( Teresa Wright), is the daughter of a schoolteacher and has married somewhat below her station. They have two children, teenager Reenie ( Judith Robinson) and ten‐year‐old Sonny ( Charles Saari). The Floods' humdrum life is shaken by three events: Cora's sister, Lottie ( Eileen Heckart), comes for dinner and confesses her marriage is sexless; Reenie's date at a dance, a young Jewish boy, commits suicide after he is humiliated by an anti‐Semite; and Rubin announces that the harness company is going out of business. The incidents contrive to bring about a certain understanding and compassion and, with them, the small hope of a somewhat happier life. Reviewing the Saint Subber–Elia Kazan production, Louis Kronenberger felt that “Inge's most definite quality—his feeling for human loneliness—became too insistent,” yet most critics and playgoers applauded the semi‐autobiographical drama, which was a revision of a 1947 work, Farther off from Heaven.