Last Train to Nibroc
By Arlene Hutton. Directed by Maureen Shea. Set Design by Mirta Tocci. Lighting by Neil Anderson. Costumes by Rafael Jaen. Sound by Rick Brenner. With Gregory G. DeCandia and Sandra Shallcross. Presented by Coyote Theatre at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Thursday through Sunday through June 23.

Ever since Adam woke up next to Eve in the Garden, there has existed the possibility of a significant chance encounter. But surely a special circle in Hell is reserved for dramatists who begin their plays that way, and Arlene Hutton deserves to go there for the meet-greet-and-marry scenario she’s concocted for Last Train to Nibroc, a 90-minute one-act that feels longer. She also adds the sin of airbrushed nostalgia, as if the simple folks of World War II always managed to smooth over any incongruities in time for a happy ending.

Hutton sets her play in what seems of late our favorite era, when Raleigh, a pilot discharged from the service because he gets “fits,” takes a seat on a cross-country train next to Mae, who is returning home from a failed Christmas vacation with her soldier fiancé. After the customary moves (him) and rebuffs (her), the coincidences that bind them pile up as if Ibsen had run amok in a well-made play. Their chatter leads to a relationship by the time the train pulls into the station, apparently because they live in neighboring home towns in Appalachia and both are determined to leave the farm.

The play’s structure is dependent on exposition, Hutton loading each of its three scenes with information about the characters’ lives, along with obligatory exchanges of their dreams for the future. He wants to be a writer; indeed, he is convinced of his destiny because F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathaniel West are riding on the same train where he meets Mae. The fact that they are riding in their coffins doesn’t seem an ominous sign. She wants to be a missionary but has little patience for the frailties of the folks around her. The story covers the period from 1940 to 1943, with dialogue alternating between revelations and recriminations as the romance rekindles over the passing years. We are asked to believe that Mae has been promoted from classroom teacher to the principal of her school and that Raleigh has sold his first story to the Saturday Evening Post before the lights come down. The dénouement turns on a misunderstanding that is contrived beyond endurance, stemming from Mae’s misunderstanding the name of Raleigh’s affliction.

Raleigh and Mae are about 19 at the start, and that apparently gave director Maureen Shea the idea to cast recent graduates of Emerson College, where she is professor and chair of the department of performing arts. Gregory G. DeCandia and Sandra Shallcross are attractive young actors who look their roles, but they haven’t the energy or the technique required to carry a two-person show on their own, especially one that has them seated for much of its duration. Shallcross is given the more difficult assignment, compliments of the playwright, who makes Mae a bigot and a hypocrite, despite her religious leanings. DeCandia turns Raleigh into a more appealing character, endowing him with a sense of humor that almost masks the character’s desperation at being left behind in a war he wants to fight. Both Shea and the actor get high marks for handling the second-scene climax, when a fit comes over Raleigh on stage, with decorum.

Designer Mirta Tocci turns Shea’s staging concept into a stripped-down but effective décor, enlisting a two-seater bench that serves for several locales and a tiny model train, complete with lighted windows, that inches along the front of the stage to mark the progress of Mae and Raleigh’s courtship. The problem is that the train’s itinerary is often more compelling than the action. Tocci uses the bench to suggest coach seats on the train (the ambiance enhanced by Rick Brenner’s sound design); a park in Corbin, Mae’s home town, where the Nibroc (backward spelling — got it?) Festival takes place; and a swing on Mae’s front porch.

If your heart beats a little faster when the gal gets the guy, you might like Hutton’s work, which received a 2000 New York Drama League Best Play nomination. But check any need for stage truth before you board this train.

Issue Date: June 14-21, 2001