Last Train to Nibroc

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Last Train to Nibroc by Arlene Hutton and directed by Mark Edward Smith is at the Mad Cow Theater (54 W Church St, Orlando, FL 32801) through March 8, 2020. The play begins with May  (Alexandra Rose Horton) reading a book on a train on December 28, 1940 somewhere west of Chicago. A soldier named Raleigh (Dalton Hedrick) asked if he can be seated next to her. The set was spartan and simple, the train seat to house right from where I was seated, a curved bench center stage and then May’s front porch on house right.

May was a petite and powerful woman. She and Raleigh both spoke with thick and round Kentucky accents. Raleigh considered himself an author. He asked May about the book she was reading. She said it was religious, but he seemed convinced it was a romance. She had traveled across the country to visit a boyfriend who had entered the service. That trip had gone horribly, he wasn’t who she thought he was. There was a playful banter between the two who were from the same part of Kentucky. Raleigh wanted to go to the big city to start his writing career but after meeting May he decided to return to their home town. On that fated train trip he asked May if she would go with him to the Nibroc festival if he decided to stay in Kentucky.

The middle staging area had the couple meeting at a state fair. Raleigh was dressed in farmers overalls and his prospects for the future seemed dim in the back woods rural town. The friendship sparked on the train had also soured but the two though throwing jabs at each other clearly seemed to care about where life might take them. Each of them was flawed but proud. They grew on me because of their frankness and hopes for a better life. It made me wonder at the myriad of ways that my ancestors might have met and fallen in love through the centuries. This was the first of three plays in a trilogy by the Florida native author.

 Last Train to Nibroc by Arlene Hutton

Mad Cow Theater 54 W Church St, Orlando, FL 32801

Tickets: $30 – $42

Key Themes: Romance, choices, consequences

Age Recommendation: 13+

Run-time: Approx. 90 minutes with no intermission

Remaining Show Dates:

03/01/2020 03:00 PM (Sunday)

03/04/2020 08:00 PM (Wednesday)

03/05/2020 08:00 PM (Thursday)

03/06/2020 08:00 PM (Friday)

03/07/2020 08:00 PM (Saturday)

03/08/2020 03:00 PM (Sunday)

Tribes by Nina Raine opens at Mad Cow.

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Winner of the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, Tribes tells the story of Billy, a young man with a comically dysfunctional family. Having been born deaf in a hearing family, Billy struggles to find his place in his own home. But when he meets a young woman who is going deaf herself, she begins to teach Billy about a whole different type of family he never knew he had. With dark humor and heartwarming sincerity, Nina Raine’s exquisite new play explores what it means to belong.

I had to find my way into the dress rehearsal by entering the back door. I took a wrong turn and found myself at a dead end at the actors dressing rooms. In the green room several people were signing to each other. It seemed awkward to ask them for directions to the stage since they might be deaf. I finally asked the woman working at a sewing machine, which way to go. I literally had to walk on the stage to get into the theater. Thankfully no actors were rehearsing at the time. I arrived just as a run through of the show was about to start. The rehearsal had two signers on house right who signed all of the dialogue. I glanced over periodically to watch their graceful interpretations.

The play started with individual family members entering the stage in the dark. When they reached their mark, a stage light flooded them in a pool of light. Light patterns moved on the back wall in sync with classical music much like the abstract animated sequence in Fantasia. Ruth (Hannah Benitez) and Daniel (Peter Travis) had just returned home to live with their parents. Billy (Michael Gordon) sat silent at the end of the table as the family argued. There were lighting tech issues to be ironed out, so I got to sketch this opening scene quite a few times.

When Billy met Sylvia (Lexi Langs) they stood face to face. Billy had
been deaf since birth and Sylvia was slowly becoming deaf. There was a
palpable chemistry between them and finally Billy leaned forward to kiss
her. After their exchange a small ball of light rose against the back
wall and it exploded into an expanding universe of stars filling the
whole stage with dancing points of light.  It was a beautiful visual
analogy about how the heart expands when it finds love.

Billy’s family, especially Daniel feels like Sylvia is taking away to join the tribe of the deaf. When she comes to dinner, the patriarch, Christopher (Mark Edward Smith) confronts her by insisting that signing is an inferior form of communication. Christopher and his wife Beth (Marty Stonerock) are both authors so they believe in the power of words. When Sylvia signs poetry, there is no denying that her graceful movements are poetic and beautiful. The direction by Aradhana Tiwari heightens the shows heart felt theme. During a family argument the sound cuts out entirely giving the audience an insight into Billy’s experience. When Sylvia performs at the piano, abstract forms and notes dance in a rhythmic projection. Sight takes place of sound to experience the music. There are subtitles as Billy and Sylvia sign to each other. This is s show about love and wanting to belong. Experience the magic for yourself at the Mad Cow.

Mad Cow Theatre 54 W Church St, Orlando, Florida

Tickets are $11

Aug 21 at 8:00pm to Sep 20 at 3:00pm

ASL-interpreted performances will be held on August 23 at 3:00pm and on September 4 and 17 at 8:00pm.

The History Boys at The Mad Cow Theater

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On August 5th, I went to a dress rehearsal of The History Boys, written by Alan Bennett, at The Mad Cow Theater.  This show, directed by Mark Edward Smith was quick witted and fast paced. The school bells rang with incessant frequency causing the boys to cascade and rush like waves hitting a beach.  I grew flustered, trying to catch then all in one place. Philip Nolen, gave a memorable performance as the boys’ unorthodox history teacher. Philip kept the boys and audience laughing while making them think. He would playfully swat a student if he wasn’t keeping up with the playful banter. The boys would protest but they didn’t mind. One admitted he was a bit hurt that he wasn’t swatted. It meant the teacher didn’t like him.

One boy described his date with a girl as if he was recreating a historic battle. Adolescent sexual yearnings were fodder for playful humor. I came to admire the teacher’s closed door tactics until he was found guilty of inappropriately touching a boy.  It suddenly seemed that the all boy’s school was bubbling over with homosexuality. A young teacher, Peter Travis, joins the school staff and he challenges the view of history as entertainment. he prepares the unruly handful of senior
schoolboys, for coveted places at either Oxford or Cambridge by making them challenge historic fact. Everyone at an Ivy league school knows the boring facts. They want to see someone think outside the box. The boys were encouraged to challenge conventions and therefor  they not
only learned historic fact but they understood its motives and meaning. I was a bit put off by this teacher’s view that any student who didn’t get good grades could always go into the arts.

When the older teacher is about to be expelled, he breaks down in class, lamenting the years he wasted teaching the same material again and again. It is the first time the students got to see him as a flawed man rather than a clown. Everyone seems to want to sweep his indiscretion under the rug except for the school administrator played by Tommy Keesling. The very purpose of education seemed overshadowed by the chaos of adolescence. The play write turns a blind eye to the harm done from lost trust. The one boy who didn’t play along in classroom games got accepted into his chosen Ivy league school not because of what he learned from history, but from his family connections.

 The History Boys plays Thursdays – Sundays, Aug 8 – Sept 7, 2014 in The Harriett Theatre.
Curtain time is 7:30pm for all evening performances and 2:30pm for all matinees. Tickets start at $28.25.

 The History Boys

• What: A comedy-drama by Alan Bennett

• Length: 2:40, including intermission

• Where: Mad Cow Theatre, 54 W. Church St., Orlando

• When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, through Sept. 7

• Tickets: $28.25 and higher

• Call: 407-297-8788

• Online: madcowtheatre.com