To be able to play TJ, the main character in The Coast Starlight, actor Robby Matlock used as a resource his best friend in college who was a Marine and served in Syria. “He kind of helped me understand the mindset of what it was like back in that time.”

It’s sometime in the 2010s during the War on Terror and his character, TJ, is a Navy combat medic stationed in Camp Pendleton in San Diego. TJ goes AWOL the day before he’s supposed to deploy back to his second tour in Afghanistan. He jumps on a train that goes from Los Angeles to Seattle covering 1,000 miles as he runs away.

What follows, as he ends up in a coach with five other passengers, is an exploration of whether strangers can reach out to one another, as well as what effect each might have on the others. And, as it turns out, everyone in that area of the train has their own secrets.

“The author, Keith Bunin, was interested in the idea of being alone in public,” Marlock said. “The people who get on public transportation, like a train, you spend so many hours with them but you don’t know them at all.

“This play centers around that idea and goes into theoreticals of ‘What if I spoke to this person? How would they affect me? What would I learn from them? And could they have potentially changed my life if I’d just decided to talk to them?’”

The Main Street Theater production, the regional premiere of this 90-minute, no-intermission play, starts with TJ and a woman called Jane in the coach. “She is a cartoonist, story artist.  She’s going up to Seattle to break up with her boyfriend. Everyone who ends up getting on this train has some sort of reason or is going through a tough time.

“TJ and Jane, there’s kind of this energy between them which might be romantic that the characters theoretically explore but multiple times we say throughout the play ‘But you didn’t actually say that to me.’

Instead of really talking to each other, much of the time the characters in the play speak to the audience. But then they respond to some of these supposedly unexpressed thoughts and address each other.

“The players open up to each other throughout the play but we make it pretty clear that’s not actually what happened.”

Matlock went to college on an acting scholarship and after graduation went on to get his MFA from the University of Houston.  He’s gone on to do straight plays (loves doing Shakespeare because of “the musicality of the language) and musical theater (his first job out of college was doing Texas Outdoor Musical at the Palo Duro Canyon).

The  most challenging part in playing TJ is telling TJ’s story. “Because he is someone who has gone through the military and is experiencing a lot of pain and feels like the only way to solve it is to run away. I’m the kind of person that wants to face stuff pretty head on and tackle stuff as it comes up.”

Also challenging but less so: “It’s a lot of words,” he said, laughing.  

“I think people should come to this because it sort of gives people permission to open up to others. There are moments that characters are saying: ‘Oh if I had known that about you, I would have helped you. Or I relate to you.

“It’s a reminder that it’s okay to open up to others and even when you feel alone, you’re not. Somone else is probably going through something similar or having just as rough a day as you are.

Performances are scheduled for February 7 through March 1 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at Main Street Theater – Rice location, 2540 Times Boulevard. For more information, call 713-524-6706 or visit mainstreettheater.com. $40 – $63.

This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.

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