Love and war: 'Mary's Wedding' at the Jungle Theater

Playwright Stephen Massicotte peers into the psyche of a young woman on the cusp of her nuptial day and finds her broken-hearted. Massicotte spins this redolent ache into "Mary's Wedding," a romantic and poetic recitation that opened Friday at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

Director Joel Sass and choreographer Carl Flink have approached this reverie as an exercise in movement and storytelling. Actors Alayne Hopkins and Sam Bardwell roam across an old barn, designed by Sass with rough timbers, ropes and a wrought-iron double bed. We can appreciate the effort and the dynamism, but Massicotte's script is principally a proclamation -- a manifest spoken by two actors about love, war and loss. As such, we are told much more than we are shown -- a fact that no amount of movement can elevate.

Massicotte jumps through moments in the lives of Mary and Charlie, from their first meeting, to their courtship and most significantly to Charlie's assignment in the front lines of World War I. Bardwell has the ruddy cheeks and blue eyes of youth and a natural, winning innocence. Hopkins' movements are more mannered -- her character is British and a bit affected -- so the sense that she is acting occasionally intrudes and takes us away from the moment.

For all the sweet charm, "Mary's Wedding" spends too much time in exposition. Flink's design for the movement is muscular and swift, although the question arises whether this good work enhances Massicotte's script or whether it necessarily distracts us from the narration. Sass' eye and ear are as unfailing as ever, and his technical team -- Barry Browning, Greg Brosofke and Sean Healey -- manages a cinematic quality to the stage action. However, because the play lacks a prevailing reality, these bells and whistles tend to call attention to themselves.

This conscious artistry holds our investment at a distance for 80 minutes and then, surprise! All these elements coalesce into a conclusion that strikes with genuine emotional heft. Charlie, whose fate never seems in question, and Mary realize that as real as their young romance once was, it can only exist in a dream. And with Mary's wedding day arriving on the sunrise, that dream must evaporate in a powerful moment of human tenderness and wincing pain.

I'm not sure Massicotte fully redeems the play in those final 10 minutes, but as one audience member said when the lights came up Saturday night, "I'm always surprised when I come here." Well put.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299