A new play with music by Dan Callaway
A burnt-out PhD student boards a train in 1997 and finds himself face to face with Victorian art critic John Ruskin.
What starts as an argument about Turner, ambition, and artistic truth becomes a reckoning with illness, love, and whether beauty can still reach someone who’s spent a lifetime trying to earn his worth alone.
Camden Fringe Festival 2026
August 5–7
Circle and Star Theatre — Hampstead
About the Play
Set over the course of a return train journey in 1997, Train to Cleveland with John Ruskin blends music, memory, humor, and unexpected cross-time encounter.
Michael Nolan is days away from defending his dissertation while trying to hold together a life built on endurance: a family in crisis, mounting work pressure, chronic exhaustion, and a growing distance from the people who love him most. Then John Ruskin appears.
What starts as an argument about art becomes something more personal. As the journey unfolds, Michael has to confront the cost of carrying everything alone.
This intimate play with music explores ambition, caregiving, inherited patterns, and the frightening vulnerability of allowing yourself to be loved, supported, and changed.
Why Ruskin?
John Ruskin was one of the most influential art critics of the Victorian era: a fierce defender of painter J.M.W. Turner, a social critic, teacher, moral thinker, and deeply contradictory man.
In this play, Ruskin becomes a companion, adversary, and mirror to Michael.
Music and Style
Train to Cleveland with John Ruskin combines contemporary folk-influenced music, theatrical storytelling, and charged conversation.
Set against the rhythm of a nighttime train ride, the play moves between realism, memory, humor, and an unexpected encounter that reshapes the journey.
The score draws from 1990s alternative and singer-songwriter traditions alongside English and Tuscan (Ruskin’s favorite) folk influences. Ruskin’s songs weave together traditional folk textures and poetry by William Wordsworth.
Intimate in scale and emotionally immediate, the play explores ambition, caregiving, isolation, and the difficult vulnerability of allowing yourself to be helped.
Development Journal
May 2026 – Table Read at Boston Conservatory
The first public reading of Train to Cleveland with John Ruskin helped clarify the play’s emotional center.
While the story begins with arguments about art, listeners responded most strongly to the relationships underneath them: Michael’s growing distance from the people who love him, his exhausting need to carry everything alone, and the unexpected tenderness that develops between Michael and Ruskin over the course of the journey.
The discussion afterward pointed toward the next phase of development: trimming and sharpening the more academic passages so that the story can move more fully through conflict, humor, vulnerability, and human connection.
We now move toward an on-its-feet workshop in June and continued musical development ahead of its Camden Fringe premiere. 🙌
Artist Bios
Dan Callaway is a writer, performer, and teacher based in Massachusetts. He serves on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where he teaches musical theatre voice and vocal pedagogy.
His work explores the intersection of art, memory, spirituality, and human relationship through intimate theatrical forms. Train to Cleveland with John Ruskin grew out of a fascination with 19th-century artistic figures, chamber-scale storytelling, and the emotional cost of trying to carry life alone.
As a performer and educator, Dan has worked extensively in musical theatre, contemporary voice training, and collaborative performance-making. He is especially interested in creating actor-centered work that can live equally well in small rooms and larger theatrical spaces.
Joey Nicoletti is a Boston-based performer, teacher, and collaborative artist originally from Ohio. He recently completed his MFA in Musical Theater Vocal Pedagogy at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he currently serves on the faculty.
His work spans musical theatre, concert performance, music direction, and voice pedagogy, with a particular interest in emotionally grounded storytelling and the relationship between technical precision and human vulnerability.
In Train to Cleveland with John Ruskin, Joey originated the role of Michael Nolan and has collaborated closely in shaping the play’s musical and theatrical language.
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