[NEohioPAL] Another Rave for LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC in the Plain Dealer - Final 4 Performances

[Neil Thackaberry]

*'Last Train to Nibroc' is a trip worth taking*

*By Chuck Yarborough, The Plain
Dealer<http://connect.cleveland.com/user/cyarboro/index.html>
*

*February 21, 2010, 5:33PM*

*Review*
“Last Train to Nibroc''
*When:* 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, through
Feb. 28.
*Where:* Actors' Summit, 86 Owen Brown St., Hudson.
*Tickets:* $26 to $29 ($23 for seniors on select nights), available online
at actorssummit.org <http://www.actorssummit.org/> and by phone at
330-342-0800.


Authors and playwrights have used trains as extended metaphors just about
since English inventor George Stephenson fired up the first one back in
1822. They can symbolize a life on the right track, one that's jumped the
track or one on the wrong track, whatever.

So Arlene Hutton, the playwright-conductor behind “Last Train to Nibroc''
isn't the first and won't be the last to leave the station. And neither the
plot nor the denouement is breaking any ground. As surely as an engine leads
and a caboose ends, it's pretty obvious from the minute the lights go down
and the all-aboard is given just where this train will stop.


With that in mind, it's up to the two actors who portray the naive May and
the big-dreaming Raleigh in the wartime morality play to supply us with our
locomotivation. Shani Ferry and Keith Stevens, who play the roles at Actors'
Summit in picturesque Hudson, use an onstage chemistry that goes together as
well as clickety and clack to do just that.

The romance tells the story of a pair of traveling Kentucky hillbillies who
discover they're from neighboring wide spots in the road. The two meet on a
train fleeing from broken – derailed? – dreams. Epilepsy won't let him fight
Nazis or Japanese with the Army Air Corps and reality won't let her get the
MRS degree she thought she craved from her hometown sweetheart, who also
happens to be a flyboy.


Once again, the elegantly simple stage at Actors' Summit puts the onus on
the cast to carry the story. Indeed, Stevens and particularly Ferry actually
make you feel a little

guiltily voyeuristic for peeking in on lives that are paradoxically simple
and complex.


It would be easy to see – and portray – Raleigh as a wide-eyed redneck drunk
on wanderlust. After all, he enlisted to soar into the wild blue yonder, and
when that failed, he set off to join a pair of late lamented fellow
passengers – Nathaniel West and F. Scott Fitzgerald – as a star in the
literary world. And May's plans to spread the gospel despite her myopic view
of the real world is straight out of an Andy Hardy movie.


But Stevens gifts Raleigh with a depth that belies the rube accent and the
big talk. In each of the play's three scenes – separated only by brief
blackouts – Stevens reveals more about Raleigh. Not to us – Samuel Morse
couldn't telegraph this ending any better – but to Raleigh himself. And in
doing so, he changes Raleigh from a character into a man, as real as any who
ever lived, breathed, laughed or cried.


That would not be possible without Ferry. It would be unfair to call her
simply Stevens' foil. She's more a mirror into which Raleigh can look and
seen himself, if only he'll take the time.


Her bluegrass accent is more consistent than Stevens', which actually
enhances the innocent naivete of God-fearin' May without turning her into a
parody. And like Stevens, it's

possible to watch May become more layered in each scene, and yet still see
the inexorable link between each incarnation.

With these two aboard, “Last Train to Nibroc'' is the little engine that
could.
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