←Recommendations of Cream

A well-handled plot twist makes you hurry back to read a piece a second time. THREAT LEVEL: CREAM is a magician’s trick of a short play. With Kara and Rusty’s banter over an abandoned gallon of milk on a metro car, John Bavosa leads us down a path that ridicules safety measures - how many times do our regulatory-inspired worries come to nothing? This delightful play gets you right where it hurts with a dairy surprise lingering in your mouth. Fine satiric work!

Great script! A meet-cute with a sharp edge!

A paranoid young woman engages a stranger on a subway train with her concerns about potential terrorists. He calms her down and they share commuting woes. The play ends with a surprise twist that will leave you guessing. Well done, John!

Well, now, that wasn’t the ending I was expecting! And it turns the innocent, rom-com trajectory of this play into a deliciously dark and cynical roller coaster ride. Bavoso’s dialogue is fantastic, and a few of the jokes had me laughing out loud. But it’s that ending, and the complexity Bavoso gives it (Is she doing him a favor? Probably not, but...) that makes this play shine.

A hilarious commute as two debate world-views and safety, each exhausting the other one. But perhaps this was the best trip they could've had. Well done.

This short, sharp mostly-two-hander appears to be a very well-executed example of a familiar template: two strangers at odds in a public space who come to find commonalities and achieve understanding. But this little play has more on its mind about the world we live in today: how we respond to risk and where we seek safety, and how easily we can be manipulated into confusing the two.

I'm generally not a fan of twist endings, but the twist at the end of Threat Level: Cream felt organic and deeply existential, while also making me jump while reading. I can only imagine how effective it would be in production! The play leading up to the twist is a quite engaging portrait of two harried government workers meeting semi-cute on the Metro when suddenly ... well ... read it or see it for yourself.

A seemingly “normal” commute with fun and witty banter that leads you in one enjoyable direction. But then Bavaso pulls the rug under you with a marvelous twist. Well done!

Extremely funny, timely, and well-written, this ten-minute play is a trip (pun intended). Just when you think you know what's going to happen, Bavoso sends you reeling off in a direction you never expected. Full of snappy, witty dialogue, great roles for both actors, a strange little truth that many of us have felt but never expressed, and a wicked ending that will leave audiences talking about it for days. Great piece!

I enjoy hyperlocal stories and Threat Level: Cream is a quintessential DC and Metrorail story, from recognizable characters to the very train announcements and posters. However, Bavoso makes this piece accessible to more than just Washingtonians, using DC scaffolding to talk about general American self-obsession and suspicions. Some great quips in here as well, which I've come to expect in Bavoso's work.