Recommended by Donald E. Baker

Matt and his father Walt have a fraught relationship based on Walt's personality and Matt's childhood memories. Sherry has a problem allowing herself to be vulnerable. Thanks to help from the three other characters, these issues seem to be happily resolved by the final scene in a nudist camp, where all is revealed (except for Walt's tattoos, which are a big subject of discussion throughout). But that scene has a twist that makes one suspect Matt and Walt will have a whole new set of issues going forward. Funny, dramatic, intriguing work with good central roles for mature actors.

We've probably all seen or even written plays wherein two chairs represent a car onstage. Here the two chairs are occupied by Allen the over-detailed trip planner and Mary his longsuffering wife. In due course they are joined by four additional people. Watching the six of them acting out stuffing themselves into the pretend car promises much hilarity. And then comes the twist concerning what is really happening on this "road trip" and where this ersatz car really is. And finally pomposity gets its comeuppance in a satisfying conclusion. All in ten delightful minutes. Great work.

This would be hilarious on stage. Imagine Lucy and Ethel under the pressure of a competition acting out making invisible cakes with invisible ingredients and invisible equipment and you get an idea of the possibilities Emily McClain has set up for her actors. The final coup de gras will be tricky to carry off, but if successful it'll bring down the house. "Don't Touch the Carrot Cake" is a very tasty concoction indeed.

Yes, this play has familiar tropes that may lull one into thinking they know where it's going--a wealthy dying matriarch, a family with too many uneasy relationships, a lost will, a lawyer with questionable intentions. But then a clown--an actual clown--shows up. And a maid is revealed to have been a stripper well-known to some of the male characters. And there's an evil child off stage. And a lamb, a live, cute, heroic lamb on stage. It's a marvelously quirky concoction a cast of character actors will have a great deal of fun with. And so will the audience.

Nora's memory is failing. She tends to repeat stories but in the process gets frustrated as trivial details --in this case the color and temperament of a couple of cats--prove elusive. Frank corrects her if she strays too far from the facts as he remembers them, which only frustrates her more and makes the details assume outsized importance. Ricardo Soltero-Brown perfectly captures the language and atmosphere of a discussion this older couple have probably had countless times before and will again. The manner in which he illuminates their relationship is stunning in its exquisite simplicity.

If you're a gay man devoted to the cause of equality, and you see someone preaching homophobia but acting on his same-sex desires on the down low, are you obligated to out that person? Even if that might destroy that person's life in the process? And what if other lives end up being collateral damage? That's the moral dilemma posed by Ron Lagomarsino in this very moving play. It has four full-blooded characters that in the right hands would be memorable on stage, and an emotional story that will linger long after the final blackout.

As I write this five days before Christmas, I can only feel comradeship with Veruth in her dissatisfaction with the holidays of her culture. And ours, apparently, even though Prillaman gives them names much more appropriate than our traditional ones. The words he gives his characters, and the order in which they speak them, make the darkness of the situation glide along on a constant trickle of amusement. And then when Santa shows up, well, who knew the devastation one small but well-aimed teacup could cause. The play is imaginatively conceived and wonderfully executed and funny as heck.

So, everything we young gay boys fantasized about our comic book superheroes was true--at least according to Jimmy Olsen and Robin the No-Longer-a-Boy Wonder reminiscing in their Key West bar. (I always had my suspicions of Alfred the Bruce mansion butler.) Jimmy is going through something of a crisis, but true love wins out in the end and there's a lovely moral to the story. Super-heroic work by Glenn Alterman, as always.

Naughty, disbelieving American children need only fear a smiling 12-inch spy lurking on a shelf. Children in several Northern European countries face a much worse threat--Krampus, a nasty piece of folkloric work if ever there was one. Even people listening to Rene Zabel's audio characterization in front of a roaring yuletide fire will feel chills running down their spines. If you feel surfeited by excessive Christmas cheer, here's the perfect antidote.

No one is immune from officious professional busybodies, not even Santa. Just as he is about to embark on his annual world tour, the whole enterprise is threatened by a representative of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement investigating him for "excessive generosity to muggles." Can there possibly be a happy ending? Will Christmas be saved? It's a charming play infused with Rex McGregor's usual twinkling sense of humor.