Inspired by Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart. Up-and-coming cartoonist Stuart fights to keep the lid on his mother's and aunts' simmering angst. But the family's secrets channel themselves into a bizarre shapeshifter that guzzles soda, communicates by fax, and spouts old German verse.

Friedrich Schiller's classic tale of warring queens inspires this gothic romp through the weirder side of suburban America.

Maria/Stuart, by Brooklyn-based playwright Jason Grote, is a cleverly built, well-concealed pit trap. At first, the play seems like a pleasant stroll through a family of comical, middle-class eccentrics—in just a few steps, it plunges into a dark subterranean maze...Here's hoping this isn't the last we'll see of Jason Grote.

The Stranger

Written in true Grote form, Maria/Stuart explores—and redefines—the boundaries between reality and fantasy, ordinary and bizarre, chaos and normality. It's also darkly comical, witty and relevant.

Twin Cities Metro

Absolutely astonishing. Tremendous writing, incredible acting. And laughs. Big laughs.

DC Theatre Scene

An ingenious tale, and mined with offbeat, explosive devices.

Seattle Times

Crazily entertaining comedy...surreal, witty, expertly performed. Maria/Stuart is a mélange of intense, ludicrous, silly, common-garden-variety family hell. It is more than enough for a great night out at the theater.

MetroWeekly

Grote has made a name for himself in recent years with scripts that explode the boundaries between the ordinary and the chimerical, the political and the aesthetic, the intimate and the dizzyingly cosmic.

Washington Post

Premiere Production: Maria/Stuart had its world premiere at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC in August 2008. The performance was directed by Pam McKinnon.