The Mint Theater Company has brought onstage at New York’s Theater Row yet another lost or underappreciated play. Lynn Riggs’ “Sump'n Like Wings” follows the adventures of Willie Baker, 16 years old at the play’s start.
Playwright and poet Riggs was born and raised in Oklahoma, and his works are set in the Southwest. He wrote more than 20 plays, many of which were produced but didn’t garner much attention until “Green Grow the Lilacs,” which proved to be the template for the magnificent musical “Oklahoma.”
The Path to ‘Sump’n Like Wings’
Riggs left Oklahoma for New York City, where he joined the downtown artistic and literary community of the 1920s. It’s possibly the type of move that Willie was trying to make in “Sump'n Like Wings.”
In the play Willie (Mariah Lee) is under the thumb of her mother Mrs. Baker (Julia Brothers). Mrs. Baker runs the restaurant in the hotel her brother Uncle Jim Thompson (Richard Lear) owns.
Uncle Jim is sympathetic to Willie’s yearnings, believing that a person can’t suppress their purpose. “You can’t keep a lid on those feelings,” he says. He proves to be right.
