It’s a splendid moon-filled night at Coley’s Point in August, 1926. Eighteen-year-old Jacob Mercer has returned from Toronto to the tiny Newfoundland outport, hoping to win back his former sweetheart, Mary Snow. But Mary has become engaged to wealthy Jerome McKenzie, and she is still hurt and bewildered by Jacob’s abrupt departure a year earlier. She will not be easily wooed.

Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

David French
Born in Coley’s Point, Newfoundland, David French was one of Canada’s best-known and most critically acclaimed playwrights. His work received many major awards, and French was one of the first inductees into the Newfoundland Arts Hall of Honour.

Among his best-loved works are the semi-autobiographical Mercer plays: Salt-Water Moon, 1949, Leaving Home, recently named one of Canada’s 100 Most Influential Books (Literary Review of Canada) and one of the 1,000 Most Essential Plays in the English Language (Oxford Dictionary of Theatre), Of the Fields, Lately and Soldier’s Heart. The Mercer plays have received hundreds of productions across North America, including a Broadway production of Of the Fields, Lately. This quintet of plays about a Newfoundland family has also touched audiences in Europe, South America and Australia. In addition, French produced skillful adaptations of Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Forest, Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.

David French's profile page

• Winner, The Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award
• Winner, Dora Mavor Moore Award (Outstanding New Play)
• Winner, Hollywood Drama-Logue Critics Award and ACTRA Award
• Winner, Canadian Authors Association Literary Award

“Salt-Water Moon shines.”
—Philadelphia Daily News

“[Ravi Jain’s 2016 production] sheds a new light on Jacob’s relationship with his father. … But more than anything, … Jacob and Mary are two people trying to balance love, independence and responsibility. … It does what any good production of a classic does: reminds us why it’s a classic in the first place.”
—Toronto Star

“David French has created an old-fashioned love song that fills Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre with tough talk and tender feeling.”
—Maclean’s magazine

“Small-scaled and delicate, Salt-Water Moon is a radiant affirmation of the gifts French exhibited in his earlier plays. Spare, lyrical and tightly constructed, there’s nothing in it that isn’t essential, yet the images the writer conjures up stay in the mind long after the play is finished. It’s a long time since Canadian theatre has been graced by a play as well written as this one.”
—Ottawa Citizen

“[Salt-Water Moon is] a gem of a play, an old-fashioned love song that is affecting, funny, and evocative as a dream.”
—Globe and Mail

“This is a lovely play, lovingly written. We’ve not met the likes of Mary and Jacob on any stage in many a long day. You’ll not soon forget them.”
—Hollywood Drama-Logue