Mary's Wedding

The ending really is quite extraordinary in its emotional impact. CBC Radio Canada

Lightning strikes fast and hard before soldier boy Charlie and local girl Mary have even met in Stephen Massicotte’s gorgeous little First World War–set two-hander. . . . Massicotte mines a similar vein of magic and loss in a cruel world to create this heartfelt elegy to love and war. Herald Scotland

[T]he tale is genuinely affecting. TimeOut, Chicago

Massicotte blends a war story that could well be a two-act action play, and the story of two lovers intriguing enough to be a two-act conventional romance, into a one-act tightly constructed play, but never seems to be slighting either story. Potomac Stages, Washington, DC

The truth is in the details, and Massicotte’s lovely language is well-grounded, but aspires to its own sort of poetry. It doesn’t overshoot the mark... The narration is vivid, but the relationship between the young lovers, Mary and Charlie, is rendered in charming, everyday exchanges. Milwaukee Magazine

Massicotte writes with an earnestness that is rare in this cynical day and age. San Jose Mercury News

Have you ever had a dream so real you wish it could be true? Mary’s Wedding is like that dream; sublime and thoughtful, it lingers in your mind long after you’ve woken up and gone home. Avenue Calgary

Massicotte’s play is simple, too—deceptively so, in that its uncomplicated story contains a world of experience. Washington City Paper

This is what theatre is about. A brilliantly written piece reflecting true to heart relationships and what is needed to be done to work through obstacles to reach the one you love. Chicago Stage Standard

A play that understands loving and grieving and shakes you with the horrible immediacy of war. Orlando Sentinel

[T]he way the playwright works with the dream structure he’s set up is skilled and subtle. It just works so well. Regina Reviews

Massicotte doesn’t push his anti-war message. He doesn’t have to. The charm of his romance juxtaposed against prosaic descriptions from the trenches . . . do it for him. San Francisco Chronicle

Stephen Massicotte is the poet, working with homey materials to create a 95-minute love story. . . . It turns the audience into poets, too, making us imaginative participants in this story of doomed love. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Covering first love thwarted by war, how loving someone strongly is as frightening as it is exhilarating, and companionship in war, the play’s dream setting now in this revival achieves full effect. Edinburgh Guide

Both poignant and suspenseful, the play is relevant to this day. CurtainUp, Los Angeles

[A] ninety-minute experience through heartbreaking surreality. Indianapolis Examiner

Mary’s Wedding has audiences breathing in at the first words and only consciously exhaling after the last scene ends. Victoria Rainbow News

With a refreshing lack of cynicism, this deeply romantic dream-play goes straight to the heart with timely themes of love and loss during wartime. The Seattle Times

The opening-night audience sat entranced and the final moments are some of the most heart wrenching I have experienced in a theatre in a long time. Edmonton Sun

Spare, artful, ethereal, powerful, and unexpectedly poetic . . . the tale is written with such freshness, invention, and emotional depth that it’s anything but predictable. Journal Sentinal, Milwaukee, WI

Mary’s Wedding . . . proves Massicotte is a gifted storyteller with an ear for detail and imagery. . . . It was Massicotte’s descriptive writing that allowed the audience to really lose themselves in the moment. There was nary a dry eye in the house by the time the actors took their final bows. Calgary Herald

Put[s] you in mind of the grand passion of Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, the vastness of their love mirroring the wild tangle of nature. The Washington Times

There are many thrills that can be experienced in the theater. But the sensation of flying through a landscape on the back of a galloping horse is not usually among them. So there’s a certain bravado . . . in writing a play about a cavalry charge. Or about lovers whose feelings ripen on horseback. In Mary’s Wedding . . . Stephen Massicotte gets us up in the saddle for both. The New York Times

[T]aps into some strikingly intense feelings about love, loss, and recovery. Chicago Tribune

You can tell from the audience’s rapt silence that this is a special show, not to be missed. Now Magazine

[L]ove and war may be the oldest stories we have. But they also never grow old, especially not when they are told with as much delicacy and restraint as Massicotte’s play displays . . . The Boston Globe

It is a lovely story. At times funny, at times romantic, sometimes dramatic, a little sad, but always with that easy charming undertow that pulls the audience along with it. Applause! Meter

If this production had been a videotape I would have rewound it and watched the whole thing all over again the minute it ended. New York Theatre Review

This is what theatre is about. A brilliantly written piece reflecting true to heart relationships and what is needed to be done to work through obstacles to reach the one you love. Chicago Stage Standard