Stephen Massicotte's drama about a love affair during World War I plays as a single, intermissionless dream (literally -- Mary dreams the story on the eve of her wedding), and by the end most women in the audience have wept. The dream is a blend of memory and imagination: Mary Chalmers, a precocious girl from London, moves to the Canadian countryside and meets a "farm boy" named Charlie Edwards. Charlie teaches her how to ride a horse; she teaches him poetry; they fall in love. Then the war starts and Charlie has to fight in France with the Canadian cavalry, under the affectionate eye of an officer named Sgt. Flowerdew, played by Mary herself in her nightgown. Julie Jesneck is strong and fervent as Mary and funny as Flowerdew; Cody Nickell is a strapping but sometimes oversentimental Charlie. Massicotte's script can be saccharine, so the sentimentality isn't all Nickell's fault, but the flaws are also not fatal. A wooden, life-size model of a horse serves as a centerpiece and alternates as a charging cavalry mare, a dream-horse galloping through the Canadian countryside, and something from the cover of a romance novel. The script exploits the same blend of war muck and passionate dreams, and the surprise is how well it works, how often it keeps from being maudlin.
