Searching for a unique, memorable way to celebrate St. Valentine's with a sweetheart? Go see Echo Theatre's production of Arlene Hutton's nostalgia romance, the award-winning "The Nibroc Trilogy" at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Billed as "five actors, three plays, one love story," it's a three-play cycle tracing the initial courting ritual and subsequent married life of a charming, deeply in love, small-town Kentucky couple from the 1940s into the post-war era.

The first part of the trilogy, "Last Train to Nibroc," opened Feb. 5 to an enthralled, near-capacity crowd. Morgan Justiss and Ian Sinclair, as the couple May and Raleigh, trade gentle barbs and polite revelation with thorough sincerity and a natural conversational style.

Well-matched and engaging, they imbue Hutton's lyrical script with a veracity that is both a tribute to America's "greatest generation" and very accessible to today's audience.

Co-directors Ellen Locy and Pam Myers-Morgan capitalized on both actors' appealing looks, talents, and delightful stage chemistry. In elegant balance, they create an aura of romantic intimacy while keeping the play fairly clipping along.

The play's three scenes are set upon a railroad car seat, a park bench, and a porch swing. The focus stays on character interaction while clearly revealing time's passage and setting change, a simple but effective design motif.

Nibroc soars. It beguiles. It buries sweet memories in a real gentleman's proffered hankie and restores faith in the values of character and integrity, in the promise of true love.

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