‘Bus Stop’ Review: Travelers Find Shelter From a Storm

When a blizzard strands stagecoach passengers in a lodge in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” violence and mayhem erupt. Death looms.

Eight people are also marooned by a snowstorm in William Inge’s 1955 play “Bus Stop,” but what looms for them is life: Some take stock, others try to figure out what awaits.

Best known for its movie adaptation starring Marilyn Monroe, “Bus Stop” isn’t seen much in New York these days, so Classic Stage Company, the National Asian American Theater Company and Transport Group should be thanked for this revival.

The director Jack Cummings III staged Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” and “Picnic” in repertory for the Transport Group in 2017, and is familiar with the delicate bard of the Midwest, whose deceptively plain work captures the lives of working people. The most consequential decision here is to forgo amplification, creating a sense of intimacy at the Kansas diner where four bus passengers and their driver (David Shih) wait out the weather. The diner’s owner Grace (Cindy Cheung) and a waitress, the high school student Elma (Delphi Borich), are used to parades of customers, but maybe not for such extended stays. Conversations stop and start as the visitors chat among themselves and with the locals, who include the sheriff, Will (David Lee Huynh). Elma, for example, is fascinated by Dr. Gerald Lyman (Rajesh Bose), a former professor whose flowery verbiage evokes a broader, more literate world than hers — and a more perverse one, too, as he has a taste for underage women.

But the most striking of the newcomers is Cherie (Midori Francis), a nightclub singer who has been whisked away by Bo (Michael Hsu Rosen), a smitten young cowboy who plans to take her to his Montana ranch, whether she likes it or not.

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The story line is rattling to a contemporary audience. But the beauty, humanity and complexity of Inge’s writing is that he makes us understand what drives Bo and, even more important, who Cherie is, and why she stays with Bo.