William Inge’s Bus Stop opened in March, 1955 and was a Tony nominee for that year’s best play, as were Harold Clurman for best director and Elaine Stritch for best supporting actress. Now it’s revived by Classic Stage Company, NAATCO, and Transport Group in a production directed by Jack Cummings III that, were Inge introducing it now, would undoubtedly retain a strong Tony chance.
As always with the three-act piece, the action unfolds at 1am and continues until 5am in a street corner restaurant—Grace’s Diner—30 miles west of Kansas City. The particularly thorough stage directions stipulate that a blizzard is raging. A bus is parked outside until the weather allows the trip’s resumption.
Under these circumstances, diner owner Grace Hoylard (Cindy Cheung) and assistant Elma Duckworth (Delphi Borich) must cater to delayed passengers Cherie (Midori Francis), a chanteuse of questionable past; Bo Decker (Michael Hsu Rosen), a Montana rancher stalking Cherie; Virgil Blessing (Moses Villarama), Bo’s quietly insightful musician pal; and Dr. Gerald Lyman (Rajesh Bose), a sonnet-spouting philosophy professor with an incorrigible eye for young women. They’re joined by bus driver Carl (David Shih) and, intermittently, by Sheriff Will Masters (David Lee Huynh).
As the play proceeds, with the agitated Cherie and the initial pushy Bo the prominent figures, Bus Stop increasingly works its Inge magic. At its core, the dramedy—there’s an abundance of smart, laugh-eliciting lines—is about human connection.
It concerns the ability to connect or in some (many?) instances the inability to connect. Among the connecting contenders here, diner-owner Grace, who lives alone above her store and doesn’t like it, has a genuine connection problem. On the other hand, driver Carl, who doesn’t hide his interest in the Grace he sees every couple of days on his route, has no connection problem whatsoever. In time, this is made utterly clear.
It may be that young Elma, outgoing and naïve (she calls herself “stupid” once but isn’t) is the most obvious connector. Dr. Lyman, who works his wiles while knowing they’re not worth working, is the worst at connecting and realizes he always will be. How clever it is of Inge to have young Elma and aging Dr. Lyman enact an aborted version of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, thereby underlining their opposing situations.
How even cleverer of Inge to provide his own Romeo and Juliet in Bo and Cherie. Granted, audience members are ahead of him on the eventual reconciliation, but probably that’s where Inge wants them to be, sufficiently satisfied to see how he works things out. Has Inge’s reputation faded unfairly since his death? This revival burnishes it.
There are, it does need to be noted, questionable aspects to this Inge dust-off. They begin with a problem that may also have afflicted the original production. Roadside diners, by their appealing nature, are usually places where the conversational buzz dominates, along with the cash register’s ring.
Though Grace’s Diner is outfitted with a hot plate and a coffee pot at the ready, not only is there no cash register but the characters focused on at any given moment require the others to remain silent. It’s as if those silenced are in personal reveries. Perhaps this is a conceit Inge hoped would be acceptable. A fair guess is that spectators notice and, having no choice, just go along with it, giving in to the occasional wondering peek.
Oddly, director Cummings makes little of the raging blizzard. Inge asks for it to blow through the front door whenever it’s opened, but on Peiyi’s otherwise admirable set (notice the nifty linoleum flooring), the door is hidden. Cherie and gang enter minus any suggestion of snow. (Though a lighting designer, R. Lee Kennedy, is credited, there is no sound designer mentioned. One would have been helpful.)
Cummings has the oh-so-right cast at his incisive disposal. If choosing a first among equals had to be done, Francis’ fluttery Cherie would have to be it; but no, Rosen’s combustible Bo would have to be it; but no, Bose’s Dr. Lyman would have to be it; but no, Borich’s astute Elma would have to be it; but no—and so on through all eight ensemble members.
A final significant comment: Cummings sticks scrupulously to the Bus Stop text. But with one exception. He makes a rather pointed shift at the end involving Virgil and Grace. The change greatly affects the ending—and, more directly, who is left on stage as Kennedy’s lights fade.
It’s an especially poignant comment on broken connections and could even be regarded as Cummings emphatically deepening Inge’s attitude towards the difficulties of maintaining certain types of connections. Cummings might even be inserting an insight on Inge himself. His revision, which won’t be described further, must be seen to be fully appreciated, as it strongly deserves to be.
Bus Stop opened May 18, 2025, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through June 8. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
