←Recommendations of A Complicated Hope

Stories of loss can be complicated and difficult to write but John Mabey shows extraordinary skill here as he guides his audience through the heartbreaking events of this family's life as they exprience loss, secrecy, emotional change and relationship complexity. Its a beautifully written piece that is sure to have any audience feeling with/for the characters and will have an audience feeling privileged they were able to see this piece of the characters lives. It doesn't suprise me that its had such a prominent production history.

This play has been on my list for a while, and I'm so glad I finally reached it. What a beautiful story of loss and love and conflicting emotions entwined together. There were so many wonderful, wise one liners that by the end I wished I had been jotting them down to remember them all. Deceptively simple, this play will leave you with a lot to think about. Just fantastic.

What if the person who understands your grief the most is somebody you don't even want to be in the same room with? John tackles this question with moving humor and truth. Just lovely.

This is a moving play about grief, loss, and forgiveness. It’s efficiently and beautifully written, with richly drawn characters and an intricate, non-linear structure that could easily have become clumsy without Mabey’s light touch and careful plotting.

A Complicated Hope is a delightful exploration of characters facing a complicated situation and dealing with the loss of a mutual loved one. The characters are well thought out and delicately developed by John Mabey. While the subject matter could have been heavy handed, the playwright brings a sensitive touch to a difficult situation. A wonderful play!

Just finished reading this wonderful play and it's taking me a moment to organize my thoughts on it. It is truly a beautiful play. So rich in thought, in character. Complicated issues dealt in complicated ways yet with such simplicity, so direct. The final two scenes, in particular, quite simply sing. The back and forth in time works beautifully and the three characters are deep and rich and would be a welcome surprise for the actors fortunate enough to play them. Overall, just a wonderful play by John Mabey.

Just finished reading this wonderful play and it's taking me a moment to organize my thoughts on it. It is truly a beautiful play. So rich in thought, in character. Complicated issues dealt in complicated ways yet with such simplicity, so direct. The final two scenes, in particular, quite simply sing. The back and forth in time works beautifully and the three characters are deep and rich and would be a welcome surprise for the actors fortunate enough to play them. Overall, just a wonderful play by John Mabey.

A beautifully rendered play about grief, loss, love and family told with tenderness, poignancy and authenticity. It deals with the messy bits of being human creating three memorable characters that you're happy to have spent time with. Highly recommended.

A beautifully structured, spare composition on grief and love that feels raw and authentic and sweet. The audience makes specific connections through the play through Mabey's use of language and objects as touch points to solder together specific moments through time so that they resonate all the more poignantly. There is room here for the audience. It's a very generous gift.

A tenderly-written and well-observed play that examines the human irregularities of grief, loneliness, family, and longing for connection. Mabey uses the scattered chronology well--the shifts in time give us interesting reveals and ramp up the tension, even though the story isn't technically moving forward. The three central characters are all nuanced and sympathetic, and the unconventional relationships between them feel plausible and driven by potent needs for one another. The eye towards their intersectional identities is astute. The final scene is a beautiful, poignant punctuation mark on the play.