Recommended by Donald E. Baker

In 1948, Russian-Jewish immigrant Willie Goldberg opened his paint store in Washington, D.C. Now it is 1964, the racial makeup of the neighborhood has changed, and he and his Socialist-leaning friends have attracted the interest of the FBI. Four years later his store is the lone survivor of the post-MLK assassination riots. Comedy leavens the dialogue, but the play is a deadly serious look at some less-than-thrilling days of yesteryear. "Gold Paint" is a story that needed telling, and if there's any justice it should have a golden future.

What more could you want? One set, small cast, well-rounded characters, engaging story, all put together by Williams’s sure hand. Donny, a writer of bodice-ripping romances, has always allowed other people—his girlfriend, his agent—to make major life decisions for him. Now Bobby, a character from Donny’s never-completed work of serious fiction, manifests himself, demanding all of Donny’s attention. But working on Bobby's novel would require Donny to make radical changes in his relationships and income. Reality and inspiration collide in this excellent work.

This funny, horrifying play is a dystopian nightmare tinged with absurdism, imaginatively conceived with characters that will haunt the memory. The scenic design would be stunning in its simplicity. Excellent work, highly recommended.

Many people's expectations of Hell and its CEO are an unholy amalgamation of the Bible, Milton, Dante, Goethe, and generations of fire-breathing preachers. So imagine the surprise of the newly deceased individual in Cantrell's hilarious one-act play when he discovers Satan is a sympathetic and urbane being who presides over a well-stocked wet bar, and souls in Hell are only tortured if that's what they're into. Readers will either be appalled at the "blasphemy" or delighted by the satire. Count me among the latter. Great work!

I had great expectations for this play and it did not disappoint. It’s a tasty minced pie of a penny dreadful made up of ingredients ground together from large chunks of Dickens, smaller bits of Austen and Brecht, leavening by Sondheim and Bart, and a mysterious seasoning only revealed at the very end, all of it wrapped up in DeVita’s erudite, wicked, shameless sense of humor. There are lines that literally and literarily had me gasping in delight. Reader and audiences alike are sure to Lovett.

In Sickles's dystopian vision, states have seceded and formed an extreme right-wing paradise where anyone who is not white, straight, and Christian is persecuted, and state surveillance to insure conformity extends even to analyzing and redacting pen-pal letters between children. A family with too many secrets is enmeshed in this nightmare, and their fate is the focus of this masterful, deeply unsettling play, part of a trilogy as chilling and addictive as "The Handmaid's Tale." Read it. Read it and weep.

So just who was Godot? Turns out he was one of a food service worker's worst nightmares--a diner who monopolizes a table long after the meal was finished and the dishes have been cleared. Yes, the waiter who waited ON Godot is now waiting FOR Godot, to pay the check, to leave a meagre tip, and to get the heck out so he can turn his table. This is a wicked little masterpiece that parodies Beckett's tone perfectly.

Hilarious! What starts as the familiar trope of a controlling husband working on his wife's last nerve soon descends--ascends?--into a wonderfully absurd farce that heightens as other characters are brought on and attempt to jam themselves into a sort of clown car simply represented on stage by two chairs. Farce rarely reads as well as it plays, but the performance in my imagination had me chuckling, then laughing out loud, then cheering at the perfect ending. Fortunate indeed the performers who get to play it live and the audience who get to experience it. Brava!

The shortest of plays with the simplest of stories. A mother gives one child a Batman figure and the other gets Wonder Woman. But the gifts turn out to be life changing and a new super hero is identified. This one-page play couldn't be more sweet, more satisfying, or more well done.

Who knew Hades had an HR department headed up by Minos? Or that Sisyphus was a writer who wasn't willing to take any sort of job opening that might drain him of his creativity? We playwrights can certainly relate. The conceit is delightful, the play even more so.