Recommended by Paul Donnelly

A comedy about letting go of a lost love sounds like quite a feat to pull off, but Chloë Whitehorn pulls it off with ease. Wonderful use of misdirection and overlapping dialogue keep the humor afloat until the need to let go of the past and carry on life in the present comes movingly to the fore. A delightful confection with real substance.

Whip smart, vividly imagined, and dazzlingly funny. Where else might one find an exchange straight out of Laurel and Hardy between a harried bookstore manager and a 1,000 year-old Japanese novelist? The play also builds to an insightful meditation on the vagaries of reputation and representation. All in all, an astounding accomplishment that is deeply entertaining.

What starts as an extremely effective romantic comedy, with reluctant lovers and well meaning, if overbearing, interfering parents, deepens and darkens into a moving exploration of cultural identity, the refugee experience, and the intractable losses and horrors of war. That such a story could have a credible happy ending speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and to the author's manifest gifts.

Lyrical, sensual, and with more than a touch of mystery about who are the women who prepare to kiss a sleeping boy and what is the true nature of their intentions. This play offers a fresh and truly unique take on a classic coming of age trope.

Tamales is a dizzyingly funny and richly layered comedy of unrepentant cultural appropriation and its just comeuppance. Taking place in 2011, "when progressive disillusionment of Barack Obama was a mere three years old," and featuring a wry narrator, the entitled software developer of a "fat-shaming app," and the unassuming tamale vendor with whom she becomes obsessed, this play wittily skewers an impressive array of social and political targets in its short duration.

How can a simple job interview be so gripping? In The Offer, Bella Poynton provides her accomplished protagonist Grace with an escalating sequence of professional and personal dilemmas courtesy of the man who fired her from NASA five long years earlier. We are also forced to confront with Grace the real human cost of advanced space exploration. Fascinating intellectual conundrums abound!

This darkly comic take on how a child responds to the pressures of preschool admissions and parental expectations is very dark, but very richly comic. It offers the most satisfying sort of satire as moments of horror come into focus only to build to huge comic payoffs. One of the most enjoyable and satisfying short pieces I have read in some time.

Chiaroscuro or Slaying Holofernes address a regrettably timeless human concern (sexual harassment) through really gripping dramatic action. It's well-structured and compelling, juxtaposing historical and contemporary incidents to chilling effect. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This play has all the vivid intensity and hurtling sense of inevitability of the Greek tragedy being rehearsed. The key difference is that these young women ultimately stand up to the charismatic monster who might otherwise destroy at least one of them. This is a work of exhilarating craft with an exhilaratingly affirming, if hard-won, outcome.

Sam had me from her description of buying off the secretaries through her ultimate and unexpected triumph. This delightful (and occasionally surprisingly moving) workplace vignette pulls off the neat trick of providing credible and satisfying happy endings for all three characters. Holiday cheer without a trace of saccharine!