The Coast Starlight
Keith Bunin
San Jose Stage Company
A young man’s decision to board a train in LA heading to Seattle is one that may likely impact every day of his life going forward unless he decides in the next few hours to get off and return to where he started in San Diego. The secret he carries will not be conveyed to any of the other five people who share some or all of his journey, nor will he hear from any of them the crossroad decisions each of them is facing. Yet in their minds, each plays out the details of their situations — be they messy, sad, and/or scary — and each glances at the other five imagining who they are, why they are on this train, and what disasters they are running from or traveling to.
Thanks to the creative genius of playwright Keith Bunin, all those deeply-held inner thoughts, the guessing about others’ lives; and the imagined conversations that never happen explode onto the stage in bursts of probing, revealing, and often hilarious interactions in San Jose Stage Company’s Bay Area premiere of The Coast Starlight. The result — given the inventive, invigorating, and insightful direction of Rebecca Haley Clark of a first-class cast — is a journey for us as audience whose thousand miles and ninety minutes flies by in an highly entertaining and engaging trip up the West Coast.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
