←Recommendations of Persephone

Believing in heaven is one way to deal with grief and loss. Another is to read O’Grady’s haunting “Persephone” which offers hope in its own right. I’ve not seen a ghost story this charming since The Ghost and Mrs Muir and it has one of the best last lines I’ve ever read.

These characters leap off the page, warm and real, speaking a language at once supernatural and earthbound. O'Grady's penchant for rhythm and structure create a brilliant frame, but it's the poetry of her words, and the way that they hang like fragile jewels, that makes this play so completely compelling. A beautiful and moving meditation on grief, in its many morphing transmutations. Brava!

I love plays about death! Especially plays about mothers who are dead! I love mythology! And I love it when there's more than I expect, when I can feel something right off the page because then you know it's going to be great on its feet!

Beautiful and deep with a fascinating structure. O'Grady does a ton with a little and layers it up beautifully. The style of the play is delightful with Persephone serving as a somewhat impatient narrator eager to tell a story that the other characters--who are all mourning her--aren't quite yet ready to play. A beautiful play about grief--and how the dead recognize that the living need to keep living, even when the living want to die with the dead. This show would be beautiful to see in person and would be a delight for actors and designers.

There's a lot to love in this short play. Jennifer O'Grady puts a new spin on a classic trope with great success. In ten pages, I find myself loving each of these characters, principally because Persephone shows them such specific, disciplined love. Dynamic conflict, but such deft gentleness with characters who are experiencing and expressing their grief in different ways. This would be a beautiful piece to include in a short play festival.