Recommended by Nicholas Thurkettle

A fairytale whose darkness unfurls in waves - captivating and peppered throughout with imagery and illusions that would be a designer's delight; with constant tension as the three central personalities, each prisoners of their own cycles of behavior and want, march towards a shocking fate. Love, whether familial or romantic, is not immune from its own dark side in this excellently-paced and constructed work.

A haunting grown-up fairy tale of a mutually-tragic love, deftly evokes a folkloric world where humanity at its most brutal borders a world of majestic but dangerous magic. The world evoked by the writing is usefully scale-able to either a minimal or more robust production scenario.

Cute banter, a brisk pace, a fun reversal that resolves the misunderstanding and lands smack onto the punchline. An easy and entertaining 10-minute ride.

Works that tightrope between satirical and brutal with seeming ease. Sin Eaters cuts far deeper than your average condemnation of our networked world; showing how inescapable it is both as the new center of the economic universe gravitationally flinging people towards the worst version of themselves, and as the toxic funhouse mirror so impossible to ignore that it replaces your reality. All that - and it never forgets to be funny.

Haunting piece, sparse enough for ominous atmosphere, but sketched in enough to give its three sirens distinct voices and relationships so that the play doesn't become too abstract and purely metaphorical. Sits well in the one-act length but also gives actors a lot to work with within those pages.

Deeply silly yet the product of wise humor, this 10-minute scene is kept bouncing with true dexterity by Hampton; who finds new ways to zig and zag inside its nonsense premise for just long enough to end with satisfaction.

Simple, solid, and stageable adaptation of the indelibly sad holiday folk story. Holds to the uplifting themes while not compromising on the darker details, and presents a few excellent conceits of staging that would help bring productions of it all together into an emotional and theatrical experience.

Deeply-layered and emotionally-urgent. Ms. Lane's compassion for her characters, the detail with which she's etched their individual voices, and her resistance to easy solutions to her protagonist's thorny psychology leap off the page together - a thrilling and absolutely timely play.

Sensitively-drawn characters, an unexpected turn, and the evocative space of an old apartment cluttered with years of hoarded mail makes for a compact and emotional duet for actors.

Hilder combines snappy, deliciously profane voice with sneaky heart in telling a story that has plenty of sex in the city but is ultimately about the accumulating power of little daily decencies.