The Depot for New Play Readings

Joan carries a suitcase of a purse, a sign of her well-organized “stuff,” yet somehow in the last year she’s lost contact with her son Matt. After Matt seemingly wills himself to death and donates all his organs, Joan searches the ICU for the recipients to find answers, to find the question, to find Matt. Alex Dremann’s “The Cure” aims to make us laugh and break our hearts at the same time. With naturalistic dialog, a simple set, and unforgettable characters, “The Cure” trades easy answers for mystery and lyricism. A powerful play. Highly recommended.

In Stephen Kaplan’s “Un Hombre,” a widowed mother, Rebecca Wolfson, and her son, Josh, are frozen in grief. While Josh struggles to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah, Rebecca hides in her basement studio where she unintentionally sculpts a golem. The new heart in a wounded family, the golem communicates in Hebrew, Spanish, and English and sings licks of musical theater, both to console Rebecca and Josh and to help them reconnect to each other and to living. Poetic and theatrical, “Un Hombre” examines timeless philosophical questions with humor and tenderness. The final scene will break your heart. Highly recommended.

Mary and Bill have been married for twenty-four years, and Bill wants to celebrate with a game of “H-O-R-S-E.” Good-humored but competitive, Bill attempts to teach Mary, an unathletic librarian, how to shoot a basket, and with each pass of the baskektball, the dynamics of their marriage emerge with ever-increasing clarity. That we love this wife and husband is testament to Kathleen Cahill’s comedic writing; “H-O-R-S-E” is a wildly entertaining riff on the adage that we can know someone for decades and still have more to learn. A swish through the hoop never sounded so good. Strongly recommended.

The Mackinac Bridge, infamous for length and height, provides a comedic setting for Maripat Allen’s delightful “Five Miles Long, Two Hundred Feet High.” Jennifer must cross the bridge, but terrified by stories of cars having been blown over the bridge’s side, she pays someone to drive her and meets Jason, a veteran who understands fear. With Aristotelian unity of time and place, Allen’s play entertains us through every minute of the journey, one in which Jennifer and Jason cross more than the Great Lakes below them. Strongly recommended.

In Glenn Alterman’s “Unheard,” awkward silences punctuate the conversation of an estranged father and son, between whom incommunication has been a primary characteristic. Ironically, then, offstage sounds (hospital bells, a commanding voice over an intercom), move the action forward to an unexpected revelation. The result is a piercing meditation on the mysteries of filial attachment and the silence of death. A powerful ten-minute play, “Unheard” can be produced either in an audio format or in a fully staged production. Strongly recommended.