Why William Inge was initially so successfull as an author, and then started to be so unsuccessfull?
One of Inge’s greatest plays, Natural Affection, had the misfortune to open on Broadway during a newspaper strike, which lasted from 8 December 1962 until 1 April 1963. Thus, few were aware of the play, and fewer bought tickets. It lasted only 36 performances, from 31 January 1963 to 2 March 1963. What theatergoers missed was a powerful drama on the theme of fragmented families and random violence. […] The Last Pad is one of three of Inge’s plays that either have openly gay characters or address homosexuality directly. The Boy in the Basement, a one-act play written in the early 1950s, but not published until 1962, is his only play that addresses homosexuality overtly, while Archie in The Last Pad and Pinky in Where’s Daddy? (1966) are gay characters. Inge himself was closeted.[3] Summer Brave, produced posthumously on Broadway in 1975, is Inge’s reworking of Picnic, as he noted: It wouldn’t be fair to say that Summer Brave is the original version of Picnic. I have written before tha
