Recommended by Kenneth Jones

Hands down, the funniest American comedy I’ve seen in a long time. At Florida Rep’s PlayLab (and with a dynamite cast), it was at turns broad, dirty, charming, silly but shot-through with tender characters and a great big heart. The Staten Island-set play keeps you guessing about the root of the main character’s condition (could the overpowering Italian-American mama be the cause?), but surprises await. For a play about coming of age and becoming a man, it’s a pulsing valentine to innocence. Stephen Brown is the love child of John Patrick Shanley and Albert Innaurato.

I fell in love with each utterly distinct character in this funny-sad-aching new play about five strangers who witness a tragedy, prompting them to seek fellowship and solace. They find personal growth, empathy and connection — things that sometimes seem unachievable in modern urban life (it’s set in NYC, natch). The inciting event in the characters’ lives is very specific, but it will bring to mind national tragedies we’ve all endured and will remind you there’s a neighbor next door ready to connect. A humor-laced drama that shimmers with intelligence and surprise.

A necessary, haunting, human piece of political theater that names names, connects powerful historical dots, lays out brutal facts, and invites us to continue the fight against the national catastrophe that is our access to assault weapons. Inspired by the story and work of a Holocaust history teacher whose Parkland, FL, high school was attacked, the play is a conjuring, a cry of the heart, a criticism, and call for us to repair the world — and never forget.

I am haunted by this twisty play about what haunts us. Grief, anxiety, activism are all mixed into what seems like a genuine ghost story. A play about the power of telling our stories, when we are ready to tell them. Makes me want to read more Vince Gatton plays!

A lurid chapter in the recent history of the Mormon Church is dramatized in playwright-director Charles Morey’s gripping new true-crime drama. At once a police procedural and a rumination on institutional and personal ego, the drama bubbles with theatricality as it tells the story of a notorious member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who forged documents in the 1980s and pulled the church into a swirl of crimes — including murder by pipe bomb. It’s the stuff of great drama, a fascinating story of fraud, forgery, greed, murder and faith.

A funny, heartfelt, tender, tough coming-of-age comedy-drama about a queer autistic man navigating his past and present. I fell in love with this semi-autobiographical two-act play about Henry, whose life includes a collection of would-be friends and lovers, a deep bond with his mother and a passion for English lit. Jumping between time periods, LIGHT SWITCH explores territory we don’t see much in film, theater and TV — and it’s written by someone with the lived experience of his characters. It’s a very specific world, yet universal: Henry wants love. The path felt familiar and fresh at once.

RATTLER, about a support group for women whose family members have been accused of sexual assault, is a gripping and highly theatrical journey. In Lindsay Adams’ vision of this healing circle, the perpetrators are presumed to be innocent, with little dissent. Until there is. I couldn’t guess what was coming next, and its unexpected angle — that your son might be a perpetrator — is a fresh approach in a widening collection of plays about American sexual assault epidemic. Also loved that it revels in a highly theatrical time/space: a meeting room keeps morphing into different locations, keeping momentum going.

I couldn't help but think about the juicy ensemble dramas of Eugene O'Neill, Terrence McNally, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson and William Saroyan when I experienced this potent slice of gay ghetto life that touches on the universal need for community and connection, and the sad disease of loneliness. Funny and sad, it's a multigenerational snapshot of people reaching for more than a glass of booze.

Both intimate and expansive, A DISTINCT SOCIETY takes us to a unique location fraught with personal, political and intellectual meaning: a library on the border of the U.S. and Canada. What emerges is a prismatic character study of people yearning for connection in a context of corrosive nationalism, twisted further by our universal need to connect and be loved. I leaned into every compelling moment and each hungry character, and I learned some history I never knew. A special world.

A brilliant character study of a woman escaping her past. Set slightly in the future, Jeff Talbott’s twisty, mysterious, funny and sad play about a wife who embarks on a new life — where has she been?, where is she going?, what’s her story? — has the hint of a romantic comedy with elements of mother-daughter drama, sci-fi yarn and family tragedy. This four-actor play tackles universal human ideas with heart, humor and hope. You will never forget it. And you’ll want to see it again and again to uncover its rich layers.