The Cast Photo by Dave Lepori

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–with Rebecca Haley Clark's inventive, invigorating, and insightful direction of a first-class cast–is a journey of a thousand miles, and the ninety minutes fly by in an highly entertaining and engaging trip up the West Coast.

TJ (Braeden Harris) and Jane (Storm White) first see each other in LA as they sit waiting for the announcement of The Coast Starlight. Their thoughts about each other, which hear, confirm the paused, half-smile, eye-locking glances they give each other before boarding. She, an animation artist, immediately wants to sketch him in her journal; he hopes that they might be able to talk together, immediately realizing in his mind, however, "I couldn't talk to her because I couldn't tell her the truth about myself." But as the train begins to speed away from LA, their individually envisioned, non-spoken conversations with each other play out in front of us with increasingly personal revelations about backgrounds and reasons to be on this train–revelations that lead to more and more personal questions and confessions.

As they mentally picture getting up and sitting face to face or pacing the aisle together as they interact vigorously–all which we see but know is not really happening–Jane says what they are both probably thinking: "Somewhere deep inside, the plates of the earth are shifting ... The idea we are on solid ground is just a lie we've all agreed to tell ourselves to get through the day." While TJ is running away from a life he no longer wants to a life he has yet to figure out, Jane is heading to face a boyfriend and the expected, dreaded truth about their relationship. Like the fault lines of California beneath the train's tracks, each knows there is a possible eruption soon to happen.

As each new passenger boards in places like San Luis Obispo, Salinas, and San Jose, we are privy to learn their own shaky situations. Noah (Terrance Austin Smith) is an ex-Marine having since wandered his way through a number of odd jobs and is now hanging out on a friend's boat in Morro Bay. He is on his way to Oregon to visit a mother whose memory is going fast, unsure what that means for her or for him. While he says nothing aloud, he and TJ seem to have a connection only they understand, and Noah is not shy giving TJ stern but heartfelt advice how not to ruin his life–advice TJ dreams that maybe this stranger might give him if he could.

In one of the few times the words we hear are actually also heard by others, Liz (Charlotte Boyce Munson) crashes the train car's silence while entering, screaming on her cell phone, spilling details about the workshop she and her BF attended at Esalen to learn techniques to improve their sex lives–an event led by two moderators who looked like they could be "two stalks of celery having sex." After hearing her partner describe in a hot yoga class full of other couples that their sex life is like "two pine trees in a burnt-out forest," Liz is now on her way to empty out her stuff from his place in Portland before deciding what is next. And as Liz rants and raves, the other three imagine their back-and-forth reactions with each other, trying to decide whose side are they on, this crazy woman or the asshole she is talking about.

In San Jose, a drunken, disheveled Ed (Joel Roster) stumbles in, smelling of sweat and rum after a tough day in his current job with Inventions Publicity as he tried to help an old lady figure out how to market her Christian lingerie decorated with Bible verses. After a near fisticuffs with Noah because he was rude to Jane (events that actually happen and are not just part of imaginations), Ed relates his own hard-up story, beginning to earn genuine pity from the others who were at first repulsed from him. Of course, they never hear his sad saga, nor he does hear any questions and reactions. Still, his dreamed-up scenario does lead him to remark in his mind (and for our ears), "You know you have hit rock bottom when the people in coach class pity you."

Boarding in Oakland is well-dressed Anna (Rinabeth Apostol), who is heading home to her wife and two young boys, trying to figure out if and how she will tell her sons about the uncle they do not know they have. She also has to decide what to do with the ashes of her Stanford-grad brother she has not seen in ten years who died a homeless, heroin addict on the streets of San Francisco. Others reach out with sympathies and suggestions–all of course created in her mind as she looks around at these strangers and as they imagine what her is.

As the travelers' own memories and thoughts converge with devised conversations and reactions of the others, Rebecca Haley Clark has a heyday directing this outstanding cast in an exquisitely choreographed dance of shifting, circling, twirling, and aligning train seats, as designed on a round stage by Giulio Cesare Perrone. Along with the passengers, we enjoy watching the fast-passing green fields, autumn-leafed forests, foggy coastline, and famous landmarks of their journey north through the windows–scenes constantly swirling by via Erik Scanlon's vivid and engrossing video design. We are fooled into thinking The Stage's intimate arena has become at first a large passenger terminal and afterward a moving train passing crossings and cities thanks to the realistic and all-surrounding sound design of Steve Schoenbeck. The lights of day, sunset, night sky, and dawn all become California beautiful as part of Maurice Vercouture's magnificent lighting palette.

Imagined alliances, group brainstorms for others' futures, catty comments, probing inquiries, fun moments of joking, and much more that never happen in reality, occur for us to see through the highly energized, incredibly paced, flawlessly executed teamwork of playwright, director, and cast.

Through his script, Keith Bunin reminds us that everyone we meet in our daily lives (those we barely notice and those we ponder from afar) has a story–an important, meaningful, and perhaps life-shifting/changing one. Maybe our take-away message from this evening at San Jose Stage Company is that there are opportunities we are each missing to do more than just nod and smile or greet with only a perfunctory "Hi, how are you?" Maybe there are actual connections just waiting to be made, conversations already playing out that could be said aloud, and futures of ourselves and others that could be made better by offering the support, question, or advice that we are silently thinking only to ourselves.

The Coast Starlight runs through April 26, 2026, at San Jose Stage Company, 490 South 1st Street, San Jose CA. For tickets and information, please visit www.thestage.org.or call 408-283-7142.