←Recommendations of You Before Me

There is so much packed into this short play. The mythology is skillfully blended into a modern story of motherhood, growing up and individuality. The challenge of every parent to let their children blossom and also not lose their own personalities is what will connect audiences to this play in a heartwarming way.

This is a fine mother-daughter play. YOU BEFORE ME can be read without knowledge of the Demeter - Persephone - Hades myth. But refreshing my memory of the mythical antecedents gave added depth to the tension between Seph and Deme. I love it that Seph and her husband are realtors in Florida and that Seph has come into her own - so well that she can give just the right loving attention (nourishment) to her mother. Samantha Marchant has authored a very warm and heartfelt play for every season.

I adore this short play! It's heartfelt and true-to-life without being saccharine. The metaphor is weaved deftly but you don't need to know mythology to enjoy it. Moreover, this play has one of the sweetest last moments I've seen in a play in a long time.

Mother-daughter relationships are so difficult to capture; love and resentment, nostalgia and change, codependence and liberation, nurturing and smothering all live together in messy disharmony. YOU BEFORE ME somehow communicates it all through tellingly spare dialogue and one beautiful moment of magic.

This gentle, aching short transplants the Persephone and Demeter myth into a real(ish)-world homecoming of a grown daughter to her lonely mother—two juicy roles for sensitive actresses. In ten short pages, Marchant draws her world and its characters with great specificity and depth, and subtly asks how growth and change impact maternal love.

Love this short play. The relationship between mother and daughter is captured beautifully, the dialogue is all at once lyrical and modern, the allusions to the myth so effortless-- wonderful. Brava!

Well this is just plain lovely. Aching. True. The acknowledgment of needing to be one’s own. The declaration or it- and offer of it.
I love that Marchant captures the mother-daughter relationship so clearly, and that while it is Demeter and Persephone (or not), it could be, and is, universal.
Just a beautiful piece.

There are a lot of ways to go with a Persephone/Demeter reunion (but not exactly them…). Marchant takes the mythological and plants it right in the ground, allowing it to germinate in its own time. Mother and daughter each have a yearning and a distance to bridge and, regardless of the bond of love they share, they do not meet each other’s needs. The reader feels like one is in the room with them – a feeling I imagine is only stronger on stage. The final line… and the the final moment… stunners.

This is a lovely, heartbreaking portrait of mother and daughter, borrowing from mythology to tell a story that is universal and extremely heartfelt. Samantha Marchant tells this story with subtlety and lyrical humanity, bringing these classical archetypes to life in a refreshing, new way.

A lovely play, lyric poem really. Beautifully written and should make for a memorable production in the right hands.

Stunning. Heartbreaking. Breathtaking. Empowering. Invigorating. YOU BEFORE ME is a beautiful take on a classic myth. This play captures the struggle of growing up and finding a new parent/child relationship now that you are both adults.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!