Warren, R.I.

William Inge was a great American playwright whose work is rarely done in New York nowadays, so I drove up to Rhode Island to catch a revival of "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," a family drama that hasn't been seen on Broadway since the original production closed in 1959. I'm happy to report that 2nd Story Theatre, an ambitious little troupe whose 130-seat upstairs auditorium is located in a harbor town not far from Providence, is performing "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" with exceptional sensitivity and understanding.

Like all of Inge's major plays, "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" is a concise, well-made piece of work that takes a candid yet compassionate look at Midwestern life. Here the focus is on the Floods, a family not unlike Inge's own -- Sonny, the lonely 10-year-old boy, is a near-exact self-portrait of the author -- whose members long in vain to bridge the yawning gaps of misunderstanding that separate them. Don't expect anything fancy, though: The play, like 2nd Story's production, is as plain and tasty as a loaf of salt-rising bread fresh from the oven. Performed by a tight-knit ensemble of local actors on a near-bare stage whose walls are covered with blown-up photos of Inge and his family, it shows how a gifted director can make a show add up to much more than the sum of its modest parts. Not only is Ed Shea's staging unostentatiously illuminating -- he makes every gesture tell -- but Evan Kinnane and Amy Thompson, who play the Flood children, both give wholly believable performances that are impressively and gratifyingly free of self-consciousness. This is small-town theater at its best.

Warren’s 2nd Story Theatre has over the years carved out a revered niche for the plays of William Inge, the Pulitzer Prize winner who committed suicide in 1973. The theater has produced Inge’s Picnic and Bus Stop, and now it is turning its attention to perhaps his greatest work, the autobiographical The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

This is Inge’s take on what it was like growing up in 1920s Oklahoma. It’s about a family struggling to survive amid upheavals in the world. Impetuous Rubin Flood is a traveling harness salesman during a time when the automobile was fast replacing the horse. And he’s afraid of losing his job.

But then this play is about fears generally, about the dark at the top of the stairs that we all must face.

Certainly that is true of 10-year-old Sonny Flood, who is Inge as a precocious anxiety-ridden boy. Sonny is a petulant child who loves to collect photos of movie stars and recite Shakespeare.

He’s a “speckled egg,” says his mom, Cora. “I don’t know how he got in the nest.”

Then there is Sonny’s shy, retiring sister Reenie, who would rather spend her time playing Chopin on the piano than going out with boys. Her one foray into the world of the country-club set ends in disaster.

In a way, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs has parallels to Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing!, which was done at the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket earlier this season. Both are well-drawn portraits of working-class families struggling to survive tough times. And both have somewhat peripheral characters who come to unfortunate ends.

In this case, it’s the Jewish military cadet, Sammy Goldenbaum, Reenie’s date for the big dance. Sammy doesn’t play a big role in the play, but Inge pays special attention to him. One can’t help but think that Inge, a gay alcoholic who never quite fit in, felt a special bond with Sammy the outsider.

As Sammy is chatting with Reenie, director Ed Shea has him step out of character into a spotlight to deliver a touching soliloquy about how his actress mother rejected him and how he feels like an outcast. It’s a powerful moment, when Inge cuts through the façade of manners and taps into Sammy’s true feelings, his self-loathing.

Interestingly, Sonny’s uncle Morris, another retiring sort, is the only one who picks up on Sammy’s conflicted nature. Morris, a dentist who feels badly about drilling patients’ teeth, barely responds to his pushy wife, Lottie. He’s kind of a lump who keeps to himself. But he is ready with the rundown on Sammy, offering how underneath a sunny front, he’s just a sad, melancholy kid.

And in a sense, Stairs is about the inner life of all these characters, about the dreams Rubin has for his family, about wife Cora’s struggle to keep the family together.

As a production, though, this is not 2nd Story’s slickest effort. As of Sunday’s opening night performance, the show had yet to gel. There were more than a few moments when actors tripped over their lines.

Carol Schlink’s Cora was awfully stiff. And it wasn’t just Schlink who seemed uncomfortable with her role.

Too often the actors in this show let the mechanism of acting show through. There just wasn’t that easy sense of naturalism that a play like this calls for.

The one exception, the one place where Schlink got into the groove was in the scene with Paula Faber’s Lottie, as the two sisters bond over talk about sisterly matters, about sex and husbands.

Frank Justin’s Morris works best in the moments when he has his head buried in the crossword puzzle and responds to Lottie with the most perfunctory replies. But when he actually had some lines to recite, he was a little flat.

It was Mark Gentsch’s Rubin who was the most engaging, most convincing member of the cast. Gentsch made a tempestuous Rubin, a proud man prone to outbursts when backed into a corner. There’s rage in this man, but not so pronounced that it turns Gentsch into a caricature.

At one point, he blows up at Cora in front of the kids and storms out of the house.

Evan Kinnane, the 13-year-old actor from Tiverton who is now in his seventh 2nd Story production, was terrific as the high-strung Sonny, a boy who can be a major headache if he doesn’t get his way.

Ryan Maxwell is totally believable as the troubled Sammy, and does a nice job with that big solo.

And Amy Thompson was fine as sister Reenie.

Set designer Trevor Elliot and scenic artist Candis Dixon have teamed up to produce a striking set, a room with a staircase that is covered with painted, sepia-colored projections of Inge and his family that Dixon applied with a kitchen sponge.

In some ways, not a lot happens dramatically in this play. It is more a well-crafted look at a slice of Americana, at the complicated relations that make up a family. And this production despite its often wooden delivery tends to capture all that well.

European existentialist philosophers grandly designated fear and trembling — and subsets — as the default state of the human condition. But playwright William Inge employed a subtler intelligence when he domesticated that observation so well in his 1960 work, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

As 2nd Story Theatre director Ed Shea makes clear in the current production (through April 5), outwardly normal home lives can be every bit as terrifying as Camus's ennui. The difference is, as Inge is proud to show, Oklahomans don't whine about it.

The first of the three acts is an endurance contest, ironically amplified by quick-march pacing that prevents the actors from projecting any emotional depth and us from empathizing. So initially their problems seem as commonplace as they are uninteresting. (Inge is cleverly setting us up, reminding us that people seem complex and fascinating only after we pay enough attention.)

Rubin Flood (Mark Gentsch) is a traveling salesman who usually returns home only briefly before setting out again. This is the early 1920s and, as automobiles are catching on, he is selling harnesses, about as hot an item as buggy whips. His wife Cora (Carol Schlink) is the stereotypical middle-American homebody. She's kind to a fault, and smotheringly protective of their shy 16-year-old daughter Reenie (Amy Thompson) and movie star-smitten 10-year-old Sonny (Evan Kinnane). Cora's sister, Lottie Lacey (Paula Faber), is a lighthearted chatterbox and seems pleasant enough. But her chatter includes contradicting or criticizing every observation made by her meek dentist husband, Morris (Frank Justin).

All of this proceeds conventionally until the end of Act II, when in walks Sammy Goldenbaum (Ryan Maxwell), and the play suddenly acquires a pounding heartbeat. Sammy is an out-of-town military academy student, a blind date for Reenie. He's as talkative as Lottie, but to kinder purpose. Little Sonny is in love with him immediately, not only because he comes from Hollywood, where his mother is a minor actress, but because he's so kind and understanding. Director Shea smartly freezes the others' actions and gives Sammy a spotlight for an introductory soliloquy explaining himself. As skillfully delivered with appropriate pep by Maxwell, it reveals profound sadness.

Sammy tends to not be accepted because he is Jewish, on top of having been tossed away by his mother. From this point on, others reveal where they're coming from, or they are unmasked. We learn that Rubin feels compelled to travel because he feels boxed in at home. He comes from pioneer stock and was a cowboy when he met a pretty girl fresh out of high school and settled down with Cora. He's always wanted to do the right thing and, in a gripping scene of angry apology to Cora, Gentsch powerfully delivers that understanding.

Similar revelations accumulate. Despite her frequently bawdy talk, Lottie's sex life with Morris has left a lot — well, everything — to be desired. (Justin wisely plays him not as a nebbish but with hard-pressed dignity.) Despite Cora constantly reprimanding her sister for unseemly talk, whenever she and Rubin patch things up after an argument they end up gleefully in bed.

A lesser playwright would sentimentally end this play as Inge concludes the second act, with Sonny looking up the stairs afraid of the unknown ahead, and his mother saying that all right, they'll go up together. But Inge structures things so that the last act has to prove the long-term benefit of such comfort. A tragedy occurs (two if you include an economic disaster), and the characters demonstrate how badly or well-prepared they are for the difficulties of life. By the upbeat closing moment, Inge and 2nd Story have convinced us that even if these people don't always make the best decisions, their hearts are in the right places.

With their imaginative leap from the usual bare-bones 2nd Story set, major kudos go to set designer Trevor Elliot and scenic artist Candis Dixon. Simulating a photocollage, people and faces, some emotionally intense, are "projected" on the entire set — floor, stairs and banisters, walls — as starkly as Sonny's movie star fantasies and the others' equally vivid thoughts. Where there is darkness, after all, we're bound to imagine things.

There are a few comparisons between William Inge’s “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” currently playing at 2nd Story Theatre, and “Death of a Salesman,” the play Artistic Director Ed Shea chose not to do this season. We have a dysfunctional family, a father who loses his job as a traveling salesman and a suicide. But unlike Arthur Miller’s tragedy, there is hope and salvation at the end of Inge’s drama.

We meet the Flood family at the opening of the three-act play. Rubin, the father (Mark Gentsh), is a traveling salesman who peddles horse harnesses, a job that keeps him away from his family for long periods of time. His wife, Cora (Carol Schlink), attempts to hold the family together, struggling with her introverted 16-year-old daughter, Reenie (Amy Thompson), and loner, momma’s boy, 10-year-old son Sonny (Evan Kinnane).

The Floods’ marriage of 17 years has been a series of ups and downs, reaching its lowest point when Rubin slaps Cora after a heated argument. Cora dreams of moving from her small Oklahoma town and taking the children with her to live with her sister in Oklahoma City. Lottie (Paula Faber) is not too keen on the idea. She has her own problems in her relationship with her husband, Morris (Frank Justin).

While not a lot happens on the surface, so much is going on in the minds and souls of these lonely, conflicting people. All are struggling with their relationships and inner conflicts.

The play is thought to be semi-autobiographical and carries themes of uncertainty and loneliness that Inge includes in his other classic plays: “Picnic,” “Bus Stop” and “Come Back Little Sheba.”

The play, written in 1957, was set in the 1920s and hints at the prejudices held by many Midwesterners towards Jews and Catholics. When Reenie’s blind date accompanies her to the country club party, the question of a Jew attending is resolved. He can be a guest, but he can’t belong.

Sammy Goldenbaum (Ryan Maxwell) is also a lonely young man, rejected by his actress-mother and the pivotal point for change in the attitudes and behavior of the Flood family…a change that comes rather quickly in the short third act.

“The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” is a Tony Award-winning play that represents the style and content of many plays set during the ’20s and ’30s. It is at times a bit stilted, but director Ed Shea has led his actors to a fast-paced, dramatic interpretation of Inge’s work. He is assisted by a haunting yet simple set by Trevor Elliot and scenic designer Candis Dixon, who projected images of Inge and his famoli on the wall and floor and then painted them with a sponge. Ron Cesario came up with vintage 1920’s dress that adds to the authenticity of the period.

As usual, Shea keeps his production to two hours. A lot goes on during that period, although some of it won’t sink in until you are driving home and thinking about it. The ensemble works well together, and all deserve credit, but a few need to be singled out.

Young Evan Kinnane is a born actor who knows how to get inside his character, and is always “in character.” Amy Thompson, who was so good as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker,” looks, acts and feels like a 16-year-old, although is much older in “real life.” Schlink and Gentsch show real heartfelt emotion as their conflicted parents.

To me, the most interesting characters were the Laceys: sister and brother-in-law living in their own dysfunctional relationship. Paula Faber plays Lottie like a self-assured, opinionated, controlling wife but slowly reveals her innermost secrets and feelings. It’s a masterful performance.

“The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” continues through April 5 at 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St. in Warren, where the company is moving fast to make the top of the stairs more accessible by installing a much-needed elevator. They are approaching their campaign goal but still need “a lift” to complete the project, which they hope to have ready for their next production, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“You gave us the shaft…Now give us some guts,’ Shea tells the audience and writes in the program.

Suicide is a little extreme for a playwright, even after a sorry review or even when you sense your creative powers are on the wane, which was the case with William Inge in 1973 when he did the deed that can’t be undone. But what Inge wrote before the blues sent him into the ultimate tailspin is more than worthwhile; it’s great dra­ma.

Like his friend and mentor Tennessee Williams, Inge had a gift and he knew how to use it.

That’s what makes seeing 2nd Story Theatre’s current pro­duction of “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” a must see show.

In this most autobiographical of Inge’s dramas, the action is moved from his boyhood home of Independence, Kan., to a rural community just outside Oklahoma City. Here Cora Flood (Carol Schlink) and hus­band, Rubin (Mark Gentsch), struggle to bring up their two children: 16-year-old Rennie (Amy Thomson) and 10-year-old Sonny (Evan Kinnane). It is the early 1920s and Rubin, still a cowhand at heart, ekes out a liv­ing selling harnesses in a world turning to the automobile for transportation. They fight fre­quently and ferociously about everything from money to child-rearing to his time on the road, and the conflict has taken it toll on the reclusive Rennie and star-struck Evan. Taking a cue from their parents, the kids fight too, not just like siblings, but tooth and nail, just like mom and dad. Their conflicts are parallel: Rubin is trying to maintain his manhood in a changing world while Sonny searches for his sexual identity; and Cora desperately seeks family security while Rennie finds security through with­drawal. Cora attempts to force Rubin into a strange new world and at the same time tries to protect Sonny from the same.

Schlink, Gentsch, Kinnane and Thompson make the Floods seem so authentic you might mistake them for the family next door or just down the street. They aren’t actors in roles; they are the people they are portraying; their problems and passions are real. What a pleasure it is to see a young actor like Kinnane develop under director Ed Shea’s expert tutelage.

Cora idealizes the marriage of her sister, Lottie (Paula Faber), and husband Morris (Frank Justin). Morris is a den­tist, and the couple is secure financially, but that is all. They are childless, but that is not the worst of it. Lottie admits in a monologue that Faber delivers with passion and poignancy that Morris hasn’t touched her in “that way” in three years, and in “so many words” she tells Cora she’s never even had an orgasm. Morris is a “yes dear” man who has deserted his wife emotionally, leaving her far more lonely that Cora, despite her doubts about Rubin’s fidelity and their com­bative relationship.

Three more characters com­plete the cast: Flirt Conroy (Erin Sheehan), her boyfriend, Punky Givens (Brian Hebert) and Punky’s military school classmate, Sammy Golden­baum (Ryan Maxwell). Sammy is something of a novelty to rural Oklahoma in that he is Jewish and the son of a Holly­wood actress, albeit a minor one. Sammy is Rennie’s blind date to a dance she doesn’t want to attend. But upon meet­ing the dashing Sammy, she changes her tune. Here again, the acting is superb. Maxwell in particular shines as he deliv­ers a monologue about growing up without having either of his parents in his life. This is pow­erful stuff, much like Tom’s monologues, in “The Glass Menagerie” and just as telling.

The collaboration of set designer Trevor Elliot, and sce­nic artist Candis Dixon pro­duces a minimalist set which can almost be viewed as anoth­er character in the play, espe­cially the staircase and what it represents to each character in the play. Large images of Inge and his family are painted in sepia tones across the walls and exits of the set, providing the illusion that family ghosts are present.

This is the third Inge play 2nd Story has done in the past few years; the previous two were unqualified successes as I am certain this one will be.

There a reason for this: Nobody does Inge better than Shea; he has a real appreciation for the story, not just the one you see, but for the back-story and the side-story and the untold story and how all the stories that make up a life — good and bad, obvious and hidden, past and present — are interconnected.

The origin of Inge’s tortured psyche is only one story that is revealed in this play; many more are told as well through 2nd Story’s sensitive handling of Inge’s gift to the theater.

Dark at the Top of the Stairs was written by William Inge and opened to commercial and critical review on Broadway in 1957. The story revolves around the Floods, a working class family in a small town in Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City. The oil boom of the 1920's is in full swing and has left the Flood family behind.

The family's patriarch, Rubin Flood (Mark Gentsch), is a traveling harness salesman, not exactly a growth industry in the Henry Ford era. His wife Cora (Carol Schlink) tends to the house and hovers over their two children. Their daughter Reenie (Amy Thompson) is sixteen and their son Sonny (Evan Kinnane) is ten. Early in the play Cora comments about the children that "sometimes they act like they didn't have a father".

Knowing that the story is somewhat autobiographical is what grabs the audience. We do learn a lot about the family, which makes us think that we are getting to know a little about the playwright, Inge. We learn that the Flood's marriage is not a happy one, and hasn't been for a while. We learn that Cora's sister Lottie (Paula Faber) and her husband Morris (Frank Justin) also have an unhappy marriage.

There is very little plot for the main characters: a business trip that ends badly for Rubin and a society dance that ends badly for coming-of-age Reenie.

In this little part of the world, putting peroxide in one's hair is scandalous, trumped only by the audacity of a Jew who thinks he is good enough to step foot in the local country club. Sammy Goldenbaum (Ryan Maxwell) is a minor character who escorts Reenie to a birthday party at the club and commits suicide after being publicly humiliated at the party. This character's suicide may or may not foreshadow Inge's own suicide in 1973.

A subplot that runs through the play is that 10 year old Sonny is a sissy, who can spend hours on end looking at dramatic studio photos of his favorite movie stars such as Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. Sonny is starved for male affection and bonds immediately, and tragically, to Reenie's date, Sammy. The boy's apparent, budding, sexual awareness; mixed with an absent father, is presented subtly and with great impact. It is a terrific performance by young Evan Kinnane, which speaks directly to Ed Shea's direction. I spent much of the performance wondering just how much Kinnane understands about his character.

In the script, Cora was swept off of her feet at age 17 by Rubin. The couple got married only weeks after they met, due to Cora's pregnancy. While Carol Schlink plugs through her role as Cora, who is the play's central character, she is mis-cast. This, unfortunately, distracts from her performance.

Most of the actors' dialogue was not quite conversational when I saw the production. I expect that this will improve quickly.

Mark Genstch gives a fine performance in the much smaller role of Rubin. Paula Faber and Frank Justin also turn in good performances as Lottie and Morris, respectively.

Ryan Maxwell has a small, but pivotal, role as Sammy. Sammy's monologue seems unconnected and strangely out of place in the play, but Maxwell nails it.

In even smaller roles, Erin Sheehan as Reenie's friend Flirt and Brian Hebert as her date Punky, have little to do but hit their marks and say their lines. That is, after all, half the battle. They each do fine.

Trevor Elliot's set design consists of a set of stairs, which are decidedly not scary (contrary to the implication of the play's title) and two entrances; all painted beige with oversized images of William Inge's family. The images were projected onto the set and painted by Candis Dixon. In concept, it is groundbreaking and fascinating. In execution, the set was beige-box. Stark.

2nd Story's Artistic Director Ed Shea has an affinity for Inge's plays and does a fine job interpreting them. This production easily retains much of what makes William Inge's work so compelling.

William Inge’s play “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” is sort of a kitchen-sink drama.

The characters are dealing with everything but that metaphorical fixture: job loss, “smother” love, awkward shyness, passionless marriage, being the outsider. It could be a soap opera, but at 2nd Story Theatre, the tale is told with an empathy that connects the audience with the characters and Inge’s themes.

Set in early 1920s Oklahoma, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” begins with an uncomfortably familiar situation: some people are making money hand over fist while others are just getting by. The former are people made wealthy through the oil business, while the latter are like the Flood family whose middle-class existence seems precarious, especially when we learn early on that Rubin Flood’s job, in those days of the emerging automobile, is as a harness salesman. The Floods “feel left out not being rich these days.”

The financial issue exacerbates the emotional ones. Cora Flood suspects that her traveling-salesman husband is having an affair, and Rubin only fuels her fears with his failure to communicate. She idealizes her sister’s marriage while seeing only what’s wrong with her own.

She also is the 1920s version of today’s “helicopter parent,” hovering over her kids, fighting their battles. She buys extravagant dress for her painfully shy daughter, Reenie, and then pushes her to wear it to a party. She yells at the boys who bully 10-year-old Sonny, the “different” kid whose main interest isn’t real life but reel life: movies and movie stars.

The obsession is part of what makes Sonny a misfit, but he isn’t the only one. In this WASP-ish small, Oklahoma town, Jews and Catholics are targets of gossip. When Reenie’s arranged date for a party turns out to be charming, handsome but Jewish, the outsider theme is raised again.

This play isn’t about things that happen to these characters but rather about how they change. For each character, the dark at the top of the stairs represents fear, and each one handles fear differently. Sonny explains it when he says darkness is frightening because you can’t see what’s in front of you, and it might be something awful. There is a tragedy, but there also are confessions, reconciliations and understanding.

It’s almost too pat, and considering that this play is regarded as semi-autobiographical and that Inge ended his life in suicide, it’s interesting that “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” ends with a sense of hope, for most of the characters anyway.

2nd Story’s production makes that hope plausible because it wasn’t preceded by overdone sentimentality. Mark Gentsch as Rubin, in particular, captures the man who handles his problems by himself, in his own way — a stereotype created before actor Alan Alda’s characters made it OK to be sensitive.

Carol Schlink lets us see the insecurity behind Cora’s need to control everyone, and Paula Faber is fun to watch as Cora’s talks-too-much sister, Lacey.

The prize for most natural goes to Evan Kinnane as young Sonny Flood. His fights with his sister; his awe at discovering his sister’s blind date, Sammy Goldenbaum, is the son of a movie star; his tantrum at not getting his own way, seem instinctive.

Ryan Maxwell plays the small but crucial role of Sammy. In the play, director Ed Shea chose to have Maxwell deliver an emotional monologue directly to the audience as a sort of unmasking of the insecurities behind Sammy’s poised exterior. Maxwell is very moving, but those of us at the Discussion Sunday performance had the benefit of seeing how he might have delivered the monologue if it were staged as part of a conversation with the other characters. I liked it. I think we still could have seen through the mask of his apparent poise, but Sunday’s audience generally supported Shea’s interpretation.

Similarly, Trevor Elliot’s monochromatic set works for some, not for me. The setting for the play is the Flood family’s home, but there’s no furniture and the walls are covered with tan-colored images of people, actually Inge and his relatives, we’re told. Elliot calls them the “ghosts” of Inge’s life that haunt this autobiographical work. For this play about real life with such realistic characters, I found the “ghosts” a distraction.

Inge didn’t earn a Pulitzer for 1953’s “Picnic,” an Oscar for the 1961 screenplay for “Splendor in the Grass” or Tony Awards for actors in his 1950 work “Come Back Little Sheba,” by creating boring characters. Even the secondary ones in “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” have interesting things to say and that’s what makes it worth looking into the kitchen sink of their experiences.

2nd Story Theatre’s production of William Inge’s riveting autobiographical work, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, about a 1920s Oklahoma family struggling both financially and emotionally, is a well-directed, powerfully written drama with mostly solid performances.

Renowned playwright Inge, who won a Best Play Tony Award for "Dark" in 1957, is also the author of "Bus Stop," the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Picnic" (both produced at 2nd Story Theatre) and "Come Back, Little Sheba." His plays are purposefully and unapologetically character driven; the underlying plots are secondary to the pervasive and often overwhelming emotion that encompasses the stage and his writing.

In "Dark," believed to be heavily influenced by his own upbringing, Inge introduces the Flood family of small town Oklahoma. Father Rubin (Mark Gentsch) is a traveling harness salesman whose business has plummeted with the rise of the auto industry. His criminally shy teenage daughter, Reenie (Amy Thompson), prefers the company of her piano to that of potential suitors. Reenie’s non-conformist, temperamental younger brother, Sonny (Evan Kinnane), takes great pride and alarming comfort in his collection of celebrity photographs. And finally Cora (Carol Schlink), resident wife and mother of the Flood household, refuses to stand by and watch her family unravel.

When Rubin violently storms out in the first scene after Cora accuses him of philandering, she seeks guidance from her sister, Lottie (Paula Faber) and brother-in-law, Morris (Frank Justin), who have, in Cora’s eyes, the seemingly perfect marriage. Reenie, meanwhile, is reluctant to attend an upcoming party with her friend, Flirt (Erin Sheehan), who arranged for a blind date to accompany her. The star-struck Sonny is immediately taken with Reenie’s date, Sammy (Ryan Maxwell), when he learns the young man’s mother is an actress. A hopeful Cora is pleased to see her daughter and Sammy get along, even when faced with the possibility that her husband may be gone for good.

Events transpire on the main floor of the Flood home, eerily absent of any furnishings but for a small wooden chest that rests at the landing of a pronounced stairwell. The so-called darkness at the top of this stairwell represents fear of what lies ahead, because the Flood family can’t see what the future has in store for them.

The stage serves as a canvas of images inspired by Inge’s family, beautifully hand painted by artist Candis Dixon. The design itself is effective albeit peculiar, much like the Flood home and its inhabitants.

Early on, Schlink’s Cora was a bit too bubbly for someone with a mostly absent husband and two maladjusted children, but she came into her own with the role during the second act, especially with Faber. Although the interplay between the two actresses felt somewhat forced at first, their dialogue during the second act featured some of the play’s most poignant moments.

Gentsch delivered a notably strong performance as the misguided patriarch, and Justin said very little but left a lasting impression. Maxwell, who could easily have been upstaged by his own character’s aura of mystery, was especially moving in the supporting role of Sammy. (The fact that Inge had him step out of character and address the audience is an even bigger mystery.) Kinnane, who is hardly a newcomer to 2nd Story, showed remarkable depth and range as Sonny. The young actor is undoubtedly "one to watch" in Rhode Island’s theater scene.

"The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" is profound, engrossing, and another impressive effort from 2nd Story.