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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 24pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">'Last Train to Nibroc' is a trip worth taking</span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">By
<a href="http://connect.cleveland.com/user/cyarboro/index.html">Chuck
Yarborough, The Plain Dealer</a> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">February
21, 2010, 5:33PM</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Review</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br>
Last Train to Nibroc''<br>
<b>When:</b> 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays,
through Feb. 28.<br>
<b>Where:</b> Actors' Summit,
86 Owen Brown St., Hudson.<br>
<b>Tickets:</b> $26 to $29 ($23 for seniors on select nights), available online
at <a href="http://www.actorssummit.org/">actorssummit.org</a> and by phone at
330-342-0800.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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 <br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">guiltily voyeuristic for peeking in on
lives that are paradoxically simple and complex.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">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 <br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">possible to watch May become more layered in each scene, and yet still see the
inexorable link between each incarnation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">With these two aboard,
Last Train to Nibroc'' is the little engine that could.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>