Morgan Justiss as May, Ian Sinclair as Raleigh in "The Nibroc Trilogy"

  

The Nibroc Trilogy

by Arlene Hutton

Presented by Echo Theatre

May 8 - 31

at Theatre Too
2800 Routh St.
Suite # 168
Dallas, TX 75201
214-871-3300

$25-$30

Three plays, presented in weekly installments
Runtime: About 90 minutes

We don't often get a chance to watch actors really settle into good roles. Dallas/Fort Worth theaters typically offer only two- to four-week runs. Just about the time actors really click into it what they're doing, show's over.

So it's a rare treat to return to Last Train to Nibroc, the first installment of Echo Theatre's production of the Arlene Hutton plays called The Nibroc Trilogy. Echo has revived the plays with the same cast for a three-week return, this time in the intimate Theatre Too (below Theatre Three in the Quadrangle near downtown Dallas).

Actors Ian Sinclair and Morgan Justiss were impressive the first time around in the production in February at the Bath House Cultural Center. Now they're absolutely divine.

They play Raleigh and May, a young couple who meet and feel the first stirrings of love on a long train ride from LA to Tennessee in the early days of WW II. He's been shuffled out of the army on a medical discharge. She's nursing a broken heart after an unsuccessful West Coast reunion with her flyboy-boyfriend. "He changed!" she says again and again. "He smokes!"

Raleigh harbors ambitions to be a writer in New York City, like his idols F. Scott Fitzgerland and Nathanael West, whose bodies occupy coffins in the back of the train he and May are riding on. Bit by delicious bit, Raleigh and May share their life stories with each other. He's tickled by her naivete; she's taken by his kindness and his quick humor.

Last Train to Nibroc, in just three scenes, follows the couple over more than a year. The transitions happen easily—the simple set change swaps a train seat for a park bench for a front-porch glider. And watch how the easy, sweet chemistry happens between Sinclair (whose voice is swoon-inducing) and Justiss (a delightfully gawky redhead). The play is like a downhome, Americanized piece of Jane Austen. May is the slightly uptight young lady torn between her rigid notions about life, love and religion. Raleigh is the thwarted romantic hero, carrying too much shame for being one of the few single men in their small town not wearing a uniform (his medical condition is a point of great confusion for May—leading to one of the biggest laughs of the evening).

If you saw the Nibroc plays at the Bath House, see them again in the new setting, if only to appreciate the new level of mature, sure-footed acting these two actors are bringing to their performances. And if you missed the plays in February, get to Theatre Too right now.

The cast of all three plays will perform the entire trilogy in a marathon on May 31.

Click here to read our review of all three plays at the Bath House Cultural Center, and view a video of the opening scene in Last Train to Nibroc.