Rep’s ‘The Coast Starlight’ Is An Intriguing Journey

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents The Coast Starlight in the Stiemke Studio, September 3 – October 6, 2024. Pictured: Kelley Faulkner, Emily S. Chang, Jonathan Wainwright, Jack Ball, Yadira Correa and Justin Huen. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

The Milwaukee Rep opened its new season Sept. 6 in its Stiemke studio theater space, configured for roughly 200 seats in proscenium style, with a well-spoken cast of newcomers and familiars — and artistic director Mark Clements taking the helm for a play new to Milwaukee audiences. The Coast Starlight is also an imaginative journey on a train famous in California for its thousand-mile route from LA to Seattle.

The scenery is our imagination, too, as veteran scenic and lighting designer Jason Fassl invents an abstract train car and sound designer Josh Schmidt creates a quiet but impish background. With utmost simplicities yet dexterity, Clements has the cast shuffle around six coachlike chairs and a few pieces of luggage while changing color floor tiles reinforce the startling language and recollections.

For some 50 minutes of a 96-minute play (without intermission), playwright Keith Bunin plays boldly with language, memory and message, tipping us off by the mixture of present, past and future tenses. At the start the journey feels familiar, intimate and real, but the conversations are taking place in an “I wish” world where the actors and the patrons are drawn in, Pirandello fashion, to reveal more than their conscious selves would intend.

It would take away from the patrons’ genuine pleasure of discovery and surprise to reveal too many details, but Bunin is carving a real space for the Americana of these people, from the horrors of war to the longing for romance to the sense of lost people adrift as they move from place to place. California Dreaming, indeed. Clements, the story goes, saw this play in New York and chose it to open the season.

T.J., overplayed a bit but quite charmingly by Jack Ball, fantasizes what his conversations would be if he revealed his escapist purpose for the trip to a coachful of strangers, each with personalities we recognize, each with their own story to tell. Turns out his conversations may be fantasies, but they seem real to us. And here’s where Bunin tries one trick too many, seeking to resolve too many stories and make complex too many people. The play still feels like it’s searching for an ending.

One of Bunin’s perfect-pitch weapons, though, is conversational humor, which reaches a peak when passenger Liz, played full bore by Rep veteran Kelley Faulkner, figuratively stops the train and certainly regales the audience by loudly revealing on her cell phone her personal sexual tragedies. But again, Faulkner has interpretive problems when Liz turns into thoughtful adviser.

Another Rep veteran, Jonathan Wainwright, similarly starts out with great charisma as the drunken self-loathing passenger, but struggles to come down to reality. Also struggling to find the right mixture of character and comment are two good actors as other passengers, Yadira Correa and Justin Huen.

A standout in being believable and lovable through all the changes is Emily S. Chang as professional artist and surprise love interest Jane.

Ultimately, what started as an intriguing stage journey splinters apart in trying to tie together the loose ends of the entire car of characters. Suddenly Bunin is working against the strongest element of letting the patrons use their imagination.

The Stiemke space will be busier than usual at the Rep as renovations at the Powerhouse mainstage send this season’s offerings all over the map. The Coast Starlight runs through October 6 with a schedule including several matinees and evening performances. It is the first of four offerings this season at the Stiemke.

The Coast Starlight Gallery

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Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.