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 with which he has drawn the two principals and the poignancy he has achieved through their relationship, Come Back, Little Sheba represents not only his first-produced but also his best work.

Picnic, a more celebrated play, concerns a group of unmarried women of varying ages whose stale existence in a sleepy, midwestern town is temporarily enlivened by the appearance of a handsome vagabond…. The play … contains some of Mr. Inge's best writing, but its heavy emphasis upon sex and female frustration creates a suffocating atmosphere of sickness that, in the end, subverts most of its good qualities.

Both The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and A Loss of Roses … deal with problems stemming from the Oedipus complex. (pp. 98-9)

Finally, there is Natural Affection, Mr. Inge's latest, and perhaps worst, work to date. The first act, concerning an unmarried couple whose life together is complicated by the release from reform school of the woman's emotionally disturbed son, is relatively well written, but the second—much of which consists of a drunken diatribe by a latently homosexual neighbor against his nymphomaniacal wife—is too dreadful to discuss. (pp. 99-100)

[The] characters in all these plays are familiar Freudian types. We have the emasculated husband, the frustrated wife, the mother-fixated son, the emotionally starved child, the sexually exploited young man or woman, the sexually dependent female. Generally speaking, the men are weak, dominated by women who are themselves plagued by sex problems. There is not a single, truly strong character in the whole collection.

Mr. Inge's assets consist of a sensitive nature, a good ear, and a facile pen, which enable him to write individual scenes of power and distinction. His chief liabilities, apart from his reliance upon Freudian dogma, lie in the realm of structure and taste. None of his plays hangs together too well. Bus Stop … hardly hangs together at all. Even more disturbing, however, are his habitual breaches of good taste.

I have never seen an Inge play that did not, at one time or another, evoke a shudder because of the unwarranted intrusion of some stark crudity. The emphasis upon the half-naked anatomy of Turk in Sheba and Hal in Picnic, the aunt's behind-the-henhouse prattle in Dark, the obscene language and behavior of the neighbor in Natural Affection—all represent elements a more fastidious dramatist would have known better than to include. Had Freudian psychology not opened the door to the airing of such objectionable matters upon the stage, both Mr. Inge and his fellow-offender Mr. Williams might have written better plays. (p. 100)