MARTIN GUERRE

“Cool Passions Rule a Love Story … Martin Guerre is lean, forthright, disciplined, cool, and unsentimental. And as the director Mark Lamos has staged the work… it has the vivid simplicity of the best Japanese prints. Using the barest essentials, Mr. Lamos and his designers evoke a distant time and place with a clarity so sharp of edge that it almost cuts.” —New York Times

“Martin Guerre Enthralls … Here is the only New Year’s prediction I will make: If you don’t go now to see the Hartford Stage world premiere production of Martin Guerre, you will be waiting in line for months in New York because this unusual musical is going to be the hottest ticket on Broadway (when, not if, it goes).” —Connecticut Post

“Guerre Triumphs in Hartford … The Hartford Stage Company’s world premiere of Martin Guerre is brilliant theatre. … Roger Ames has composed a score that often erupts with the sound and passion of Orff’s Carmina Burana. —The News-Times

“Martin Guerre is as haunting as it is ambitious. It’s the stuff of which grand opera is made.” —The Middletown Press

“From the time its music explodes out of the darkness until the final shocking scene, Martin Guerre is emotionally relentless. The sweeping production so effectively conjures up the emotional reality of a mean and brutish 16th century that it literally takes your breath away. Martin Guerre is a must-see. Martin Guerre takes us places only great theatre can. Laura Harrington and Roger Ames have given Hartford Stage a marvelously ambitious project.” —The Advocate & Greenwich Time

“The musical is a compelling new version of a tale that has survived the centuries. This is a wonderful, ambitious show, worthy of the spontaneous standing ovation it received.” —The Herald

“Like Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Martin Guerre is a wonderful folk opera. From the opening scene of workers in a wheat field to its tragic high-drama ending, Martin Guerre is a spellbinding play – quite possibly the finest play to come to Hartford Stage since the epic Peer Gynt. —The Bristol Press

“Hartford Stage’s Martin Guerre is a visual and musical feast.” —The Hartford Advocate

“Martin Guerre is in a class by itself. By definition this beautiful musical tragedy is not an opera; every word is not sung. But the scope of the production is so immense, the music so powerful, that it comes close in spirit and greatness to opera. It is a formidable musical work no matter what you call it. Treat yourself to this theatre masterpiece.” —The Courier