One thing that's always been a bit difficult about the theater scene in Bend: it can sometimes be hard to find the audience for certain kinds of shows. If it's a musical, a Neil Simon comedy or something extremely well known, Bend turns up for it most of the time. If it's lesser known, new or something dark and heavy, it can be a challenge to get butts in seats. So, every time I see a local theater company trying something new, I applaud them, because putting on a play that doesn't have a built-in audience is a gamble, especially when most theaters post-Covid operate on a very thin margin.
It was refreshing and exciting to get to see a tech rehearsal for Ellipse Theater Community's newest production, "Last Train to Nibroc," a play that I was completely unfamiliar with before sitting down for it. Directed by Jeannie Whittle and starring Paige Bevando and Nathan Kristjanson, the show follows May and Raleigh, a young man and woman who meet on a train headed to Chicago from California in the early days of WWII. We follow these two over several years as they dance in and out of each other's lives and deal with the realities of life during wartime, the painful acceptance of dreams deferred and the tiny, intimate moments that build a relationship.
Playwright Arlene Hutton found her inspiration for "Last Train to Nibroc" in a fairly unlikely place: reading a biography of writer S.J. Perelman, who was brother-in-law to "The Day of the Locust" writer Nathaniel West. Hutton realized that West and F. Scott Fitzgerald both had died within a few days of each other, and their bodies were probably on the same train being carried from the West to East Coast. She created two young characters on a desperate search for their dreams and put them on that fictional train to see what being in the proximity of two fallen legends would do to them. After a successful run off-Broadway, the rest is history.
Told in three scenes across three locations — a train seat, a park bench and a porch rocker — "Nibroc" as a show is carried completely by the two actors who not only find the difficult rhythms inherent in a two-handed production, but add enough layers of flawed humanity for the audience to not just find pieces of their own lives in the story, but to maybe even understand their parents or grandparents a little bit better.
Just one main set piece is reinvented to play the different locations. With black curtains gently acting as the borders for these characters to exist between, "Nibroc" feels like genuine black box theater — something that I know Bend audiences have been missing for some time. When you have two dedicated performers inhabiting characters beautifully, and a strong script that creates the world they're living inside, surrounding them with minimal sets and props for a black box show can be even more transportive. And with Tracy Miller's actual period costumes, it's hard not to imagine yourself in the 1940s.
"Our play deals with a time in our history where we were in a world war and how it affects the lives of everyone," says Whittle. "I see this as sort of a parallel to our current lives, with the events our world has experienced for the past 23 years. The takeaway is how we handle the unexpected things that are handed to us by events beyond our control."
Another very cool thing ETC is doing with "Nibroc" is that they aren't just limiting the production to Bend. Instead, they're touring the show all around Central Oregon so areas that normally don't get a wide variety of live theater will get the chance to see this old-fashioned romance come to life.
Running at just 90 minutes with no intermission, "Last Train to Nibroc" feels like a brief and beautiful window into another time. In researching the play, I discovered "Nibroc" is actually the first part of a trilogy. I would genuinely love to see the future of these characters across the years. Hopefully, enough Central Oregonians show up so ETC puts on the entire trilogy, and I can get my wish. Just go see it, and you'll want the same.