Quote:

"A father knows how to love a daughter, oh, he knows that very well. But...when it comes to her life, her happiness, picking the right man
he doesn't know a thing. I suppose maybe because in his heart he thinks he's the really right man...and of course, that's not possible.
So he'd like "Mr. second best" to be the best of all those others."

The actual words of Norman Rose's character in "The train stops"

"I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad,
She was a pearl and the only girl that Daddy ever had.
A good old-fashioned girl with heart so true,
One who loves nobody else but you.
I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad."

Lyrics from "I want a girl"

I'm not good at describing the exact differences between metaphor and allegory and so forth, so I'll just say this.

Though I don't think there was anything oedipal or (sexually at least though perhaps emotionally on the daughter's part) inappropriate going on, after I listened to "The train stops" again on Friday I'm convinced that the daughter was in love with her father, and that in her own flawed Elspeth Eric way the author was showing us a story of a series of love stories that could never be on this earth.

Love story #1, Rose's wife dies (in childbirth?) He was a widower who for whatever reason (probably deep love for his wife, and I've known of such people) could or more likely would never remarry.

Now, granted, if one isn't wise and prayerful on such things, one could marry a woman who becomes a stepmonster to one's children. (See Rose, Norman in his RMT performance of the excellent show "The white wolf" where he marries a werewolf woman.)

But in his and his daughter's case, I think that the daughter NEEDED a womanly presence in her life as a counterbalance of sorts...to BE a second "Mom" and to be a wife for the grieving (and very kind-hearted) doctor...to help her stepdaughter grow up and not be dependent upon her father (and vice versa...didn't she assume many "wifely" duties of cooking and cleaning for her Dad) because:

Love story #2 - It's quite common that (whether one is always conscious of it or not) one marries someone like their Mom or Dad...they find they're attracted to someone with qualities they liked in their opposite sex parent.

However, look at Rose's characters comments above. Deep down he wanted his daughter to marry someone like him. (Though on the surface he was aware that was impossible.) Conversely his daughter, on the surface, felt she was going to get away and elope with the mysterious man on the train.

The mysterious woman visitor (apparently Rose's character's wife, perhaps in a perfect yet not immediately recognizeable body, like Christ was to His follower Mary after His resurrection?) says the mysterious man is hers, though she has no "rights over him" (I think that's how she said it)?

Who else could the mysterious man be then but her husband, Rose's character (or his doppelganger)...she as a deceased woman would indeed have no legal rights over him.

And what about the strange ring the dead daughter was found clutching, the one apparently just like her Mom's wedding ring? What else could it have been BUT that ring?

I think when all was said and done the daughter wanted someone not only just like her Dad, but her Dad himself...and no other. Yet she knew that was impossible, and the strain of the unobtainable relationship killed her. Conversely, her Dad's secret wish that she marry not HIM but someone LIKE him, was manifested in a way that he would never have wanted.

I think the train was a metaphor for the love described above that could never be fully possessed...as trains come and go. However, at least when the train stopped there was contact, acknowledgement and hope within the town. When the train was going to be rescheduled to go right through the town it would essentially have no relationship, no contact at all. And that was essentially (again, I think) the end of the daughter's raison d'etre, her reason to live.

You wonder at the end of the play when Rose's character says "the train never stops" if he, too, were never going to love a woman again, for reasons of perpetual grief. One hopes not.

What made this play was Rose's character's dialogue, and Rose himself, who was married 60 years and the father of three daughters, who did a great job of putting himself in the other man's shoes. (As a good actor must do.)

That and the trains, which I can't get enough of...

Excellent show choice,