Recommended by Paul Donnelly

Unrequited love can be a slow burn or an explosive ache. James has his slow burn burst into an explosive ache at the news that Keith is getting married. How James copes with that ache is the heart of this poignant and engaging play. His ultimate resignation is both grounded and heart-wrenching.

James may have won the betting pool, but George and Ray are the real winners in this sweet holiday comedy. Blending real feeling with the antics of the Holiday Door Decorating Contest creates a most engaging narrative and offers a surprisingly moving conclusion. These are plum roles for older actors and great fun for audiences of all ages.

Ooomph. This is a play of such subtle and accumulating power. The melancholy conclusion is truly heartrending. It amazes me how well I felt I knew these characters and how invested I was in their outcome in such a brief journey. It is a journey rendered with great skill and heart.

This moving play traces the impediments the world and well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) family members place in the path of the evolving relationship between two queer Autistic young men. The hard-won affirmation that ends the play is all the more credible for being incomplete. This bracingly complex narrative is filled with vivid, well-drawn characters. None more vivid, well-drawn, and engaging than the central couple. This play held me rapt throughout.

Well, that was dizzy, daffy fun! The hysterical pageant spoof evolves into a delicious murder mystery spoof without losing the lunacy of the pageant and its distinctly funny characters. This play offers a wonderful opportunity for senior actors to display their comic chops. It also offers audiences a rollicking good time.

Chilling. Absolutely chilling. This well-crafted and horrific narrative is all the more disturbing for how closely it hews to our current national reality. We are not far from this being reportage rather than fiction.

This taut thriller builds subtly and inexorably to its surprising final reversal. There is suspense in the premise and escalating suspense throughout the entire journey. The characters are exquisitely crafted and their interactions are shrewdly rendered.

A sensitive and tender depiction of a couple dealing with the death of a loved one. Oceans of feelings roil under the mundane exchanges, the dad joke, and the impatience at being kept waiting by the funeral director. We are left with a sense of the depth of their loss and the connection that will sustain them.

A wildly imaginative premise plays out wittily in a seemingly mundane exchange between a long-married couple. The texture of a longstanding relationship is well depicted and the payoff is delightfully lunatic.

In this charming two hander the laughs build and build as more and more about Nick's identity is revealed. I was drawn in waiting for Holly to catch on and tickled by the evolution of her response once she did. Ya just never know where a dating app will lead, but in this case it led to comedy magic.