With recent commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, it may be interesting to note that the celebrations and relief at war’s end soon gave way to a period of reflection that often led American artists to dark places. One of those artists was William Inge.

Encouraged to pursue playwriting by his contemporary, Tennessee Williams, Inge often populated his plays with people embittered by their life choices who didn’t transform over the course of the story, but rather came to some sort of acceptance about themselves. It was a style that fit the post-war Broadway zeitgeist, giving unhappy Midwesterners a voice onstage alongside Williams’ delusional Southerners and Arthur Miller’s angst-riddled New Yorkers.

The play that put Inge on the map was 1950’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,” a slice-of-life drama that takes us into the household of a Midwest chiropractor and his lonely, unfulfilled wife. It’s realism with a capital R, and that’s what you’ll find in Dark & Stormy Productions’ expertly executed production at St. Paul’s intimate Gremlin Theatre. What could be a musty museum piece in some hands is instead an involving trip in the theatrical time machine, propelled by powerful performances and transporting technical choices.

Dark & Stormy rarely tackles a work as old as “Come Back, Little Sheba,” but it does keep with the company’s customary focus on works with well-written women. In this case, Inge created such a vivid character in Lola Delaney that it’s easy to see why Shirley Booth won both a Tony and an Oscar for her portrayal.

While ostensibly cheerful, Lola clearly perceives something missing in her life, and it’s not just the prodigal dog of the title. She and husband Doc have taken in a boarder, a young woman college student for whom he feels protective while Lola enjoys observing her flirtations with a classmate and engaging in some of her own with the mailman and milkman.

As in several of Tennessee Williams’ plays of the same period, alcoholism is an issue, but Inge’s characters don’t romanticize addiction or wax poetic about their almost certainly unattainable hopes. His characters talk like real people, and this production brings them to bracing life, particularly through the performances of Sara Marsh as Lola and Peter Christian Hansen as Doc. Gremlin’s small space allows audiences to observe at close range the complex layers of Marsh’s conflicted Lola and Hansen’s tortured Doc. Their portrayals draw you in ever deeper, making an explosive second-act reckoning all the more jarring and effective.

Director Brian Joyce has clearly encouraged his eight-member cast to make their characters as realistic as possible, and each actor comes through with a solid performance, right down to Jack Bechard finding nuance within a libido-driven college boy and Katherine Kupiecki summoning up palpable compassion from a neighbor who at first seems merely the necessary ear for Lola’s monologues.

They’re all aided greatly by Bobbie Smith’s period-perfect set, Shannon Elliott’s creative lighting scheme and the sound design of Aaron Newman. The latter becomes something of a character of its own, using what comes out of the household radio to shape the mood, be it to spark nostalgic escapism or underline the sense of loss that permeates this very well done production.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

Dark & Stormy Productions’ ‘Come Back, Little Sheba’

When: Through Sept. 7

Where: Gremlin Theatre, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul

Tickets: $49-$45, available at darkstormy.org

Capsule: Full of fine acting, it’s impressively faithful to 1950.

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Foul play is not suspected in the death of a 70-year-old woman who firefighters found during a fire at her St. Paul senior living community apartment Friday, the police department said Monday.

The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the woman as Cecilia A. O’Keefe.

On Friday, the St. Paul Fire Department responded about 3:45 a.m. to a report of smoke in the first-floor hallway of Como by the Lake Senior Apartments at 901 E. Como Blvd. Crews discovered moderate smoke coming from O’Keefe’s apartment in the senior living community for ages 55 and older.

Fire crews extinguished the fire and found O’Keefe dead inside the unit during a search.

O’Keefe’s cause of death remains under investigation, said Alyssa Arcand, a St. Paul police spokeswoman.

The cause of the fire, which was contained to the one unit, is undetermined, said Deputy Fire Chief Jamie Smith.

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By CLAUDIA LAUER and MIKE CATALINI

A coalition of attorneys general from 20 states and Washington, D.C., is asking a federal judge to stop the U.S. Department of Justice from withholding federal funds earmarked for crime victims if states don’t cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.

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The lawsuit filed Monday in Rhode Island federal court seeks to block the Justice Department from enforcing conditions that would cut funding to a state or subgrantee if it refuses to honor civil immigration enforcement requests, denies U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers access to facilities or fails to provide advance notice of release dates of individuals possibly wanted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their immigration status.

The lawsuit asks that the conditions be thrown out, arguing that the administration and the agency are overstepping their constitutional and administrative authority.

The lawsuit also argues that the requirements are not permitted or outlined in the Victims of Crime Act, known as VOCA, and would interfere with policies created to ensure victims and witnesses report crimes without fear of deportation.

“These people did not ask for this status as a crime victim. They don’t breakdown neatly across partisan lines, but they share one common trait, which is that they’ve suffered an unimaginable trauma,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said during a video news conference Monday, calling the administration’s threat to withhold funds “the most heinous act” he’s seen in politics.

The federal conditions were placed on VOCA funding, which provides more than a billion dollars annually to states for victims compensation programs and grants that fund victims assistance organizations. VOCA funding comes entirely from fines and penalties in federal court cases, not from tax dollars.

Every state and territory has a victims compensation program that follows federal guidelines, but largely is set up under state law to provide financial help to crime victims, including medical expense reimbursement, paying for crime scene cleanup, counseling or helping with funeral costs for homicide victims. VOCA covers the cost of about 75% of state compensation program awards.

The funds are also used to pay for other services, including testing rape kits, funding grants to domestic violence recovery organizations, trauma recovery centers and more.

Advocates and others argue that the system needs to protect victims regardless of their immigration status and ensure that reporting a crime does not lead to deportation threats. They also say that marginalized communities, such as newly arrived immigrants, are more likely to be crime targets.

“The federal government is attempting to use crime victim funds as a bargaining chip to force states into doing its bidding on immigration enforcement,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who also joined the lawsuit, said in a statement Monday. “These grants were created to help survivors heal and recover, and we will fight to ensure they continue to serve that purpose … We will not be bullied into abandoning any of our residents.”

The Associated Press left a message seeking comment from a DOJ spokesperson Monday afternoon.

President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to withhold or pull back other federal funding or grant funding midstream, saying awardees and programs no longer agree with its priorities. In April, it canceled about $800 million in DOJ grants, some of which were awarded to victims service and survivor organizations.

And in June, states filed a lawsuit over added requirements in Violence Against Women Act funding that mandated applicants agree not to promote “gender ideology,” or run diversity, equity and inclusion programs or prioritize people in the country illegally.

Several attorneys general said the VOCA conditions appear to be another way the administration is targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, though there is no clear definition of what a sanctuary state or city is.

The Trump administration earlier this month released an updated list of states, cities and counties it considers sanctuary jurisdictions. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the August announcement that the department would “continue bringing litigation against sanctuary jurisdictions and work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to eradicate these harmful policies around the country.”

As of Monday afternoon attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin — all Democrats — had signed on to the lawsuit.

By SAFIYAH RIDDLE, Associated Press/Report For America

Island communities off the coast of North Carolina are bracing for flooding ahead of the year’s first Atlantic hurricane, Hurricane Erin.

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Although forecasters are confident that the storm won’t make direct landfall in the United States, authorities on a few islands along North Carolina’s Outer Banks issued evacuation orders and warned that some roads could be swamped by waves of 15 feet (4.6 meters).

The monster storm intensified to a Category 4 with 140 mph (225 kph) maximum sustained winds early Monday while it started to lash the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeast Bahamas, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Tropical storm warnings were in effect for the southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, the hurricane center said.

This image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows Hurricane Erin on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (NOAA via AP)

Here is what to know about Hurricane Erin.

Storm surge, high winds expected along North Carolina’s coast

Forecasters say Erin will turn northeast — and away — from the eastern U.S. Still, the storm is expected to bring tropical storm force winds, dangerous waves and rip currents to North Carolina’s coast. That is according to Dave Roberts of the National Hurricane Center. Coastal flooding in North Carolina is expected to begin Tuesday.

Evacuations were being ordered on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Island along North Carolina’s Outer Banks even though the storm is unlikely to make direct landfall. Authorities warned that some roads could be swamped by waves of 15 feet (4.6 meters).

The orders come at the height of tourist season on the thin stretch of low-lying barrier islands that juts far into the Atlantic Ocean.

There are concerns that several days of heavy surf, high winds and waves could wash out parts of the main highway running along the barrier islands, the National Weather Service said. Some routes could be impassible for several days.

Portions of Highway 12 on Ocracoke and Hatteras Islands are most at risk for storm surge, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said.

Erin’s outer bands hit parts of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands with heavy rains and tropical-storm winds on Sunday.

Water floods a road in Naguabo, Puerto Rico, as Hurricane Erin brings rain to the island, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Potentially devastating impacts

Storm surge is the level at which sea water rises above its normal level.

Much like the way a storm’s sustained winds do not include the potential for even stronger gusts, storm surge doesn’t include the wave height above the mean water level.

Surge is also the amount above what the normal tide is at a time, so a 15-foot storm surge at high tide can be far more devastating than the same surge at low tide.

Fluctuating strength

Erin’s strength has fluctuated significantly over the past week.

The most common way to measure a hurricane’s strength is the Saffir-Simpson Scale that assigns a category from 1 to 5 based on a storm’s sustained wind speed at its center, with 5 being the strongest.

Erin reached a dangerous Category 5 status Saturday with 160 mph (260 kph) winds before weakening. It is expected to remain a large, major hurricane into midweek.

“You’re dealing with a major hurricane. The intensity is fluctuating. It’s a dangerous hurricane in any event,” the hurricane center’s Richard Pasch said.

Lethal summer of floods

Although Erin is the first Atlantic hurricane of the year, there have been four tropical storms this hurricane season already. Tropical Storm Chantal made the first U.S. landfall of the season in early July, and its remnants caused flooding in North Carolina that killed an 83-year-old woman when her car was swept off a rural road.

And at least 132 people were killed in floodwaters that overwhelmed Texas Hill Country on the Fourth of July.

Just over a week later, flash floods inundated New York City and parts of New Jersey, claiming two lives.