←Recommendations of Memorial Day (Full Length)

Wonderfully structured to pull your heart right out of its cage. What a beautiful play. I remember those years so sadly, and this is a play that while a period piece also feels so relevant today with so much tragedy all around us and so little we can do about it. A great moving piece of theatre!

A powerful and moving play giving us insight into the despair and grief surrounding the AIDS crisis. Well done.

A heartbreaking, nuanced work populated by well-defined people and lightened by some wisely placed humor and humanity throughout. The specter of Terrence/Evelyn is at first cause for some humorous moments of mind-bending confusion for George, and then becomes a haunting herald into the play's sad, final moments. Donnelly captures unique and sympathetic humans all with different relationships to HIV and AIDS whose collisions and connections in this Rehoboth Beach oceanside home are poignant, hurtful, and, at times, healing. This play manages to be engaging and entertaining while also informative.

Paul Donnelly’s Memorial Day is an insightful and moving exploration of the power of the past to shape our present and future. Set largely during the AIDs crisis, this drama details the heartbreaking interaction between a grief-stricken doctor and the ghost of his dead lover as they debate the depths of grief, memory, and guilt. A stirring visit into a time that reverberates into our present crises.

This lovely, sad, detailed work is very much a portrait in time, but also unsettlingly prescient--the overwhelmed front line health care worker, the grief of those left, trying to navigate a new world--read through today's eyes, it operates on many levels. The melancholy is wistful, the anger palpable; it beautifully showcases the mundanity of intimacy, and the profound and lasting impact of love.

Such poetic and authentic writing about an era that was filled with both chaos and hope. In Memorial Day, Paul Donnelly expertly crafts the journeys of a group wrestling with a crisis that affected all in different ways. For those who either lived through the early days of the AIDS crisis or are looking to explore it, this play offers a captivating story that entertains as much as it informs.

A heartbreaking story of love and loss from the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Paul Donnelly transports us back in time, where we see each character vividly, smell the sea air, and feel the helplessness only love can know.

I remember those days with such sadness. This play brings back all the horror of first, the unknown, and then the knowing, the helplessness, the loss of so many talented men. And the love, don't forget about the love.

The love and terrible loss of the early days of the AIDS epidemic is perfectly captured in this compelling and heart wrenching play. Paul Donnelly shines a bright light on an unspeakable time with subtlety and depth of feeling. If you are too young to remember those days, this play will show you the tragic realities these men faced.

At the top, one character explains that this is the origin story of the love of his life. That knowledge deepens and informs everything after. Four gay men attempt to take a brief respite from the AIDS crisis, but the spectre of the virus proves impossible to escape. The apparent ghost of a former lover who died before the crisis provides an important pre-AIDS perspective in contrast to their struggles. Donnelley skillfully explores issues by showing instead of telling or preaching. A compelling and necessary play, especially for people who don’t remember or need to learn. Bravo!