By MARK LOWRY
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

On the surface, Arlene Hutton's play Last Train to Nibroc is a sweet love story about two young people, May and Raleigh, who meet on an eastbound train in 1940 in Kentucky.

But a deeper survey revels more layers.

"It is simple," says Gigi Cervantes, who plays May in Circle Theatre's production of the play. "When I first read it, I thought 'Well, nothing really extraordinary or dramatic really happens.' But, there is. It's the extraordinary that's in our everyday lives and relationships we have with each other that are so remarkable."

Hutton, which is a pen name for director/playwright Beth Lincks, got her inspiration from reading in a biography of humorist S.J. Perelman that authors Nathanael West and F. Scott Fitzgerald died within days of each other in California, and that their corpses were most likely on the same train headed back east.

"I thought that was a really interesting fact about American history, that two of the greatest writers of the first half of the 20th century were carried across the country on this train," she says. "I didn't want to write about the writers, so I put two people on that train and modeled them a little bit after my parents, who would've been falling in love about that same year."

During the course of three scenes, there are big things happening in the world, such as Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust.

"There is a cute little love story," says Derik Webb, who plays Raleigh, "but there's also being in the midst of a world war, and Raleigh is not able to participate in it because of his epilepsy. That fear is an interesting quality in the play."

"There have been a few critics who said 'How can these people be smiling and laughing while Hiroshima was happening?' They couldn't face the fact that there was romance and laughter going on during the second World War II," Lincks says. "I think recent events show that we do carry on life. Even though we're upset by events, there is still romance and laughter and joy."

Nibroc previews Wednesday and Thursday, opens Jan. 18 and runs through Feb. 16. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays. Previews are $10, or $15-$25 during the run.

http://www.circletheatre.com/

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