An Off-Off-Broadway hit in 1965, Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead still gets a lot of play today for its portrayal of down-and-out gritsters — junkies, whores, pushers, among 20-plus characters — who fill an all-night Manhattan coffee shop with personal confessions and public confrontations. Reaching for both gravelly realism and lyric beauty, Balm in Gilead at its best can be a moving, poetic portrait of hope amid endless desperation.