Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

A hoot and it strikes at the fecklessness of the fairy tale template. Wish there were more like Princess and fewer like Prince. (Maybe he should drop the title and just be Charming, get to know some folks, friends and such, before settling down.) Why do fairy tales seem to value beauty above all else? With humor and panache, HAPPILY EVER AFTER advocates getting to know each other before we wed. Has anyone in a fairy tale had a date? I like Princess for having a "cheeky snog" (perhaps in the snug of a pub) with the woodsman.

It's hard to say the final goodbye to someone you love. An immortal hero like Washington - even harder. Lawing has written a touching, very heart-felt play that rings absolutely true and reminds us of why we love George and why we miss him and his spirit now more than ever.

Terrific dark domestic fun in a James-Thurber kind of way! The image of the cat clawing its way up the drapes is what really gets me. Ha-ha-ha!

A kind of magic trick in the title, an oxymoron adjective construction that gives a curious weight and mysteriousness to this monologue from the start. The line breaks as spoken by Emma Reynolds are perfectly timed, the pacing and repetitions are just right. A powerful and poetic address against scapegoating that is so woefully and consistently a part of human nature. This reminds of the early films of Luis Bunuel - phenomenal, would love to see it performed!! If you haven't experienced the work of Daniel Prillaman - WHY NOT? - this would be a great place to start!!

The biblical jokes keep coming, to Adam and Eve on Mars, in Morey Norkin’s EDEN 2. I love Eve’s: “And I don’t have anything to go with this awful red hue.” And when the Female Voice of God says: “You know, I really thought the flood was kind of a teaching moment.” EDEN 2 whistles past the big graveyard (the end of the world) while never missing a beat.

A challenging, horrifying, literally and figuratively dark premise that Cole Hunter Dzubak meets with realistic verve, as buried alive Foster, a director of talent acquisition - how weirdly amusingly ironic!, gives his last words from a coffin. A LOT OF TIME TO THINK makes us wonder - as we’re reading/hearing Foster Owens talk into the tape recorder - what would you say? I love how the tension builds and how the note and voice at the end create a minimalist dialogue between good and evil.

With Stockton's 1888 tale you get the question. With Soucy's 2022 version, you get the answer fitting to our times. How cool! The dialogue is realistic in its well-paced jaded way. Laudable how Soucy somehow raises the stakes here - not with the potential result - it is after all one man's life - but with the build-up. A three-year marriage of . . . don't want to say too much. I see from one of the playwright's full lengths that he's written about Poe and it does seem that there is something of Poe here. Two doors, three cheers!

Clever as hell - a kind of candied pastel diner Hades- mysterious, outrageous! The smart dialogue between Lucy and Polly crackles and I felt delightfully off-balance all the way, the delicious milk-shakey feeling of not quite knowing what's up but getting closer and closer until the checkered floor starts to collapse under foot. LOLLIPOP, LOLLIPOP is impressive (as in like Lewis Carroll or Sarah Ruhl) for its looney departure from stark reality into the world of Hannah Lee DeFrates.

A brilliant tiny ballet of big emotions in which the dancers are despair and empathy. Pain and release.

Marvelous! An astonishing update on the literary device deployed by Boccaccio and Chaucer and dated by the time Shakespeare used it. Jillian Blevins explores fully and with great psychological insight just how unfunny and serious the bed trick is, something that seems lost on readers and audiences in years gone by. Or maybe it's "funny" in this THE BED TRICK because as the three characters get closer to the truth, it tickles the funny bone of how strange is human need. Now I can appreciate the weird grandeur of Measure for Measure more thanks to this magnificent work!