CRITIC’S PICK: “The play often strikes a melancholy tone, but its wheels also send up sparks of generosity and in Liz’s monologue, sharp humor. So let it do what any train should, which is to move you.”
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"3/5 Stars. In theory, it's an interesting gambit to write a play in the past conditional, theatricalizing the guessing games we all play about what's going on in others' heads: Into the Woulds. But in practice here, it's sometimes difficult to discern what's being spoken out loud, what's being imagined by which character, and what’s authorial reverie. That would matter less if 'The Coast Starlight' were more consistently engaging, but the poetic discussions in this liminal space tend to veer into ponderousness."
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“ ‘The Coast Starlight’s’ thesis — that strangers on a train could change each other’s lives, and that you never really know what someone else is going through...Life lessons such as these feel obvious, and the characters’s exchanges on empathy don't feel like natural dialogue.”
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“I started to fantasize, in fact, about how relaxing it might be to go on a long, quiet trip by train.”
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“Simultaneously enchanted and approachable, ‘The Coast Starlight’ gently reveals the significance of fleeting encounters, even when no words are exchanged. It might make you look differently at the people seated around you as we all charge forth into the future.”
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“ ‘The Coast Starlight’ has a soulful contribution of its own to make...Whatever; this trip is filled with gorgeous things to see and contemplate.”
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“It is a risky idea for a play, a more-or-less plotless character study, but one in which a good many of the conversations we overhear among the characters apparently never actually take place, leaving us confused as to what to believe about any of them.”
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“ ‘The Coast Starlight’ is the sort of play that will stick in your mind long afterward. Especially the next time you find yourself in a confined space with a bunch of strangers about whom you’ll probably wind up concocting some imaginary scenarios of your own.”
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