←Recommendations of Friendly's Fire (or, Guy Friendly Meets the Saint of Thieves)

I needed to read something modern. Fresh. I got it. Bray plunges us into the mind of a damaged soldier and while so much of this story is just plain strange, it works. It all comes together. Guy Friendly may be hanging on by a thread, but we're not; the audience will be fully engaged. We empathize with Guy Friendly through his delirium, flashbacks, visions, regrets for actions taken and not taken... I could see Wes Anderson Rushmore-like battle scenes on stage or really simple staging, as the imagery is there in the masterful dialogue. Bravo.

This is a superb entry into the world of PTSD, where nightmares, memories, and figments of imagination become as real to the audience as they are to the soldier who was unable to save his brother after a helicopter crash during the Gulf War. This moving play needs to be read and produced. An eye-opening masterwork.

The mind and what it goes through after trauma is a mystery trip, barely understood but still meaningful to the person dealing with its seemingly permanent companionship. In this inventive and stunningly well-crafted play, we hear, see, and feel what Guy Friendly carries with him when he's triggered by the recollections. His imagination is on frantic overdrive, yet it all leads him to seek the answers and the peace and friendship he needs and deserves. Aside from the masterful lesson in how to craft a mesmerizing story, John Patrick Bray gives us someone to deeply care about.

Good God, this play is such an inventive, multilayered, disturbing, beautiful, funny, horrifying work of art. Bray captures you right from the start, grabbing you by the throat, really, and never letting go. This is one of those plays I will read again and again, as there is so much to savor, and still see new details each time. Just wonderful.

If watching a man's breakdown can be described as beautiful and a little fun, I would say that about Guy Friendly. But the over the top characters and magical moments truly don't take away from the gravity of what is going on inside Guy's mind. This is such a beautiful painting of a play and I think every time you see it you will find something new and inspiring. Just magical, heartbreaking and still hopeful. Love this.

I'm always ready for a great story when I read a John Patrick Bray play. And FRIENDLY'S FIRE is utterly captivating as each character is written with so much depth and complexity no matter if they're human or beast or more. Also remarkable are the ways in which doubling occurs when characters manifest at key moments, providing directors and performers with so much to explore. A beautifully written story that resonates with the ways we suffer, the ways we heal, and the relationships that see us through.

I've heard this play's title floating across the lips of many colleagues over the years - and I can now see exactly why. The weirdness invites us in and quickly slams the door once we have stepped far enough inside the world of Guy Friendly. The characters are absurd, wacky, witty, zany and more - but as time passes, and we spend more of it with our weathered protagonist, we can only come to see him in his haphazard wholeness that can only be described as human.

Friendly's Fire tugs at the heart strings, dragging us through the mental journey of loss and recovery. From singing with a polar bear to a fatal firefight with 2 bees, Guy Friendly's expedition through his own hellish thoughts will emotionally ravage any audience member.

The fantastical world that Bray creates is an ample canvas for designers and theatre makers of any kind to put their own stylistic spin on.

Friendly’s Fire is a weird play! Knowing that going in makes the ride smoother as Guy Friendly's psyche kidnaps you on a thrill ride through Hell! Or at least through the hell of Friendly's combat-related PTSD.

What helps the oddness work is that while we have a spaceman, a Queen Bee, the Saint of Thieves, and a talking polar bear, the play is essentially a realistic story told from the subjective point of view of someone spectacularly losing his mind. We see what he sees nomatter how bizarre. Lucid memories ground this phantasmagoria, breaking Friendly's heart and ours.