Romance is in the air on the train speeding across the country from Los Angeles.
So are the bodies of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West, who died a day apart in December 1940.
The two writers don’t figure much into “Last Train to Nibroc,” now on stage at Invisible Theatre. But they served as inspiration to Raleigh, an aspiring writer who has been discharged from the Army because he has epilepsy. He is also on that train, and the only seat he can find is one next to May, who is deep into “Magnificent Obsession,” a novel with a decidedly spiritual bent.
Arlene Hutton’s play takes us through this couple’s rocky courtship, a courtship set against the beginnings of World War II.
And just as the world around May and Raleigh is uncertain, so are they. He is deeply disappointed he was discharged, she is nursing a broken heart and dreaming of becoming a missionary. Neither is quite sure what lies ahead for them.
These two are an unlikely couple. Though they hail from the same area of Kentucky, they tease and fight and say mean things. So, of course, the attraction is fierce.
There’s a Horton Foote-ish quality to this simple play, which eschews sentimentality in favor of a clear-eyed view of the starts and stops of young love.
Susan Claassen directed the short piece, which started slowly but zipped along after the first scene.
Samantha Cormier’s May was perfect — shy, opinionated, flirty, we believed every quirk and crack.
Damian Garcia nailed the Kentucky accent, but we never got the sense of what was at stake for Raleigh. We’ve seen Garcia do some fine work, so it was a little surprising.
“Last Train to Nibroc” can get a tad annoying — much of the conversation between the two in the first scene was, well, banal. But Hutton made up for that in the following two scenes, giving us full-bodied characters in search of courage to love and live.
