This play certainly lives up to its title, especially if you believe in the yin/yangs of love and hate, darkness and light, beauty and ugliness. Hovanesian packs a gorgeous, epic tale of young love, ancient myths, duty and guilt, blind revenge, and eternal longing in a few short pages.

The production demands should inspire tremendous creativity on a small play budget; the design meetings would be joyous! It could also be staged quite simply as the script provides a pervasive sense of menace amid a vivid world. All one has to do is trust the material. It's beautiful.

A fable, a folk tale, a morality play, a revenge tragedy, a romantic drama... call it what you will, "The Most Beautiful Story" is indeed beautiful. Intensely theatrical, intensely horrifying, intensely sad, and intensely... beautiful.