←The Depot for New Play Readings

In ten minutes, Jack Rushton’s “The Difference” fillets a marriage with a ruthless knife. In sharp and piercing dialog, the couple, Walter and Elise, expose every pretense of affection, concern, and intimacy between them. The emotional impact is all the more brilliant because Rushton never reveals the knife or the hand that wields it. “The Difference” is part of a series of plays about Walter and Elise, well worth a company’s time and exploration, either staged in an intimate space or on Zoom. Highly recommended.

Tom wants to flee but is immobilized, metaphorically and literally. Will Colin show Tom how to move again? That’s the primary question of “Invincible Summer,” a risk-taking drama about a concert pianist who must learn to live with Parkinson’s Disease. Creative and cinematic, “Invincible Summer” flows like memory, with scenes that are riotously funny and gut punching. Among the play’s many strengths are great roles for older actors and dialog so natural, it could have been recorded on a Manhattan street. Depot actors connected personally and deeply with this story. Audiences will too. Highly recommended.

“Camp Wonder,” Vicki Meagher’s chilling new play, demonstrates the mesmerizing intersection of totalitarianism and cult psychology. In the Gulag-like Camp Wonder, Derinda undergoes “re-education” to become a loyal citizen of the Feather Federation of States. Drawing on absurdist theater, Meagher depicts Derinda’s journey with hand puppets, patriotic rhetoric, and multiple avian images to explore the concept of individual freedom. Complex characterization contributes to an atmosphere of paranoia, while sound design and sharp dialog make the play suitable for stage and radio. In our era of rising authoritarianism, “Camp Wonder” is timely and powerful political art. Highly recommended.

In “Crazy in the Moonlight,” Melinda Gros employs witty and pointed dialog to bring to life the high-stakes world of fine art collecting, where treachery hides behind every canvas. On one night, friends gathered for a dinner party jockey for power, influence, and the social status that sterling reputation and wealth confer. As the moon rises, desperation sets in, and a couple struggles to recover their wealth and preserve their marriage. In the end, “Crazy in the Moonlight” is itself a work of fine art, a “painting-come-to-life,” where the authenticity of everyone and everything is always in question.

“Three Mothers” dares to dispense with romanticized views of pregnancy and motherhood and considers how sexual abuse, abortion, and postpartum depression affect women and their families. The drama’s center is the harrowing true story of Susan V. Smith, convicted of drowning her two sons. Hoffman masterfully reveals Smith as a complicated woman, both amoral and traumatized by abuse and poverty. To soften the play’s incendiary themes, Hoffman employs creative staging and sharp dialog. Highly recommended for festivals and theaters committed to social justice and women’s stories and to the attention of the Kilroys.

“This Not That” tells an intimate story about ambiguity and fidelity. In finely tuned dialog, Gemma Cooper-Novack reveals the intersecting and conflicting emotions that connect Daniella, Marshall, and Jessica, a charter school principal, fantasy writer, and teacher respectively. Feelings of loyalty, fear, and desire threaten to disrupt Marshall and Daniella’s wedding plans while offering the possibility of a less-contested partnership between Daniella and Jessica. Cooper-Novack’s restraint in language and plotting produces a drama whose delicate tremors intimate the cruelties of living in a world where one must choose either this or that.

The past and its ties to the present drive Ben Scranton’s poignant “Charlotte’s Revival.” One evening, while Charlie changes the titles on the marquee of a revival movie theater, Charlotte asks him why he has left off the name of the film’s child actor. The interchange that follows, as Charlie tries to understand Charlotte, revives old memories and a heartbreaking history that may connect Charlie to Charlotte in ways he does not suspect or recall. An exquisite examination of one fragile woman’s purchase on reality. Highly recommended for festivals and lovers of film.

In the stimulating “Clare,” J. Lois Diamond imagines the renowned British war correspondent, Clare Hollingworth, late in life, when dementia is setting in. Clare lives in an apartment in Hong Kong, assisted by the opaque Joanne. When Annie Wong, a young student, visits, Clare shares her life story, unaware that Annie seeks more than reminiscences. In economical strokes, the play retells the life of the intrepid Clare Hollingworth and represents the vexed relationship among Colonialists, Communists, and the residents of Hong Kong. Highly recommended for short-play festivals and festivals that focus on the lives of women.

In “Mox Nox,” Patrick Gabridge moves the traditional family drama to the back deck of a childhood home, now a precarious island in a world of rising seas. Two sisters suffer the wounds of their pasts, searching for a trick to save themselves. Time moves oddly in this play, where magic is normal and the forces of nature captivate. At turns full of wonder, anger, and sorrow, “Mox Nox” presents a lyrical portrait of life in an age of catastrophe and represents the effort to comprehend and process forces we cannot control. Highly recommended for theaters everywhere.

In “Noir Hamlet," John Minigan treats audiences to a brilliant translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet into the language of classic Hollywood film noir. The result is high jinx and plays on plays: a morgue for the graveyard; a talking skull; Ophelia as an aspiring cabaret singer/femme fatale; a family of gumshoes for royal intriguers; and sunny Los Angeles for gloomy Elsinore. Snappy dialog, double entendre, and “words, words, words” transform tragedy into comedy, with an ending you won’t see coming. This short festival version is highly recommended for high schools and touring companies. Audiences will love it.