The Cream in the Well
Completed in 1940 and copyrighted the same year after opening in Washington D.C., it had a twenty-four week run on Broadway at The Booth Theatre.
Backlash from newspaper critics influenced the play's initial reception: the portrayal of incestuous relationships was considered especially controversial.
[4] Bina, the youngest child, and Dave, the father, are described as speaking colloquially, while Lou Sawters, the family's matriarch, and Julie and Clabe, the elder two children, are portrayed as having a more formal cadence.
In the letter, Clabe asserts that he intends to never return to the farm; he further states that it was Julie who convinced him to leave in the first place.
As Lou and Bina withdraw to help recover the body, Julie angrily asks a portrait of Clabe if this is what he wanted.
Julie insists that he take Blocky up on an offer to become a lawyer, and Clabe asks why she wants him to leave so suddenly.
Clabe initially protests but eventually recognizes that he doesn't want to stop her, and Julie makes her way to the water.
[7] Examining Julie's autonomy, which leads to her inner guilt and suicide, Michael states that almost all of Riggs's women either wind up emotionally or physically dead.
[9] Jason Michael states that the men in Lynn Riggs's work are much more "numerous" and "diverse" in their natures and rewards.
[11] Michael also states that archetypal men like Clabe have trouble following social norms usually as a result of their alienation within a society that does not make sense to them.
[12] As noted by Jason Michael, there are no surviving, written records of how complex characters like Clabe Sawters were handled by the actors or received by the general public.
[12] The theme of homosexuality or homoeroticisms surfaces when Clabe engages with U.S. Navy men looking for gay sexual encounters around ports.
[13] Womack relates this apprehension to events in Lynn Riggs' personal life, noting that the playwright likely died without the support necessary to accept his own identity as a gay man.
The New York Times critic, Brooks Atkinson, stated that it was difficult to find further meaning beyond well-written prose.
[18] Riggs has been described as a playwright who “has never shown the slightest desire to adjust his work to the current demands of Broadway.”[19] Meanwhile, contemporary criticism tilts more towards positive.
Craig Womack has argued that the play is one of only two by Riggs with an explicitly gay event, citing Clabe's prostitution as one such occurrence.
When Clabe urges Julie to say what is between them, he states, “Let's say it out plain, and see if it can hurt us.”[22] Womack has also argued that Riggs’ portrayal of Oklahoma as a whole, which ranges from idyllic to nightmarish, conveys a deeper attempt at understanding himself as a gay man, and further, an Indigenous one.
