Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

Fairy tales have always been ripe for retelling and adapted to fit the times and the tellers. In this fun reversal of the Cinderella legend -- which in its original version is far darker than "bibbety-bobbety-boo" -- Elisabeth Giffin Speckman takes on the world of the paparazzi and media circus of celebrity and gives us a princess who really doesn't want her sheltered and shallow life, looking for real meaning. It's a cautionary tale told with wit, plenty of pokes at our star-obsessed fan-aticism, and a romp for the actors and audience. Get it from Next Stage Press.

I always love good sketch comedy, and this is worthy of anything Carol Burnett would have done -- I can see the casting now with her team -- and Morey Norkin does it so well with snappy jokes, groaning puns, anachronisms up the wazoo, and punch lines that land on the glutius maximus even without a serving of ginin tonicus. Try and read this without laughing out loud; go on, I dare you.

Our imaginations run away with some wild ideas that we can ascribe to our innermost feelings... or are we really alone? Is someone else there, guiding us, goading us? The idea of a writer meeting their characters in the flesh is not a new concept, but in this imaginative -- literally -- tale, Robert's struggles are with more than just his reality. The choices he makes are his own... or are they? Sometimes the world we writers create is more truthful and brutally honest than the real one. Good work that deserves a production.

This moment of stream-of-conscious/subconscious is a lovely and longing reflection on something that represents more than just a piece of furniture, and what this inanimate object holds for the one thinking and speaking the words. A fine piece for an audition or an evening of scenes: heartfelt, touching, honest, and worth hearing.

Two damaged souls manage to find a connection through a struggle with a devastating and unrelenting disease, each battling it in their own way. Despite their best efforts to keep their distance -- and the shields at maximum -- the two learn from each other and how to face their personal traumas, real and self-imposed. In the end, the caretaker becomes the cared-for, and the weak becomes the strong. It's a powerful tale of reconciliation.

With all the elements of a farce -- plates of food, dishes of dip, pitchers of Diet Coke -- Stephen Kaplan sets the stage for what promises to be exactly that: non-stop laughter and rapid-fire dialogue offered by characters that seem to be over-the-top at a breathless pace. They do deliver so well as seen in the production at Island City Stage. But then, we discover that the Tracys have stories to share of tenderness and heart-strings tugs. Reminiscent of Beth Henley's vulnerable souls, we see beneath the splatter and tossed celery there are people we can love.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote "It Can't Happen Here" about the takeover of the United States by a home-grown Fascist regime. Scott Sickles gives us a contemporary take on the idea as seen through the lens of a same-sex couple with a trans son who is lost in their frantic escape and they spend years searching for him. It is intensely personal yet we don't know the names of anyone, which makes it universal -- and harrowing -- because it can happen here, and the tesseract -- the wrinkle in time -- could be at this moment.

There seem to be two universal constants at play in this piece by Tom Moran (which I remember from the Valdez Theatre Conference): opposites attract and matter and anti-matter annihilate each other. In this situation, done with a laconic but inspired touch of humor, Hannah and Brandon seem to be poles apart in their lives and loves. Both seek a way out of their endless causality loops, but how? You will love finding out.

This quick, witty, and on-the-nose short piece gave me flashbacks to my first meeting with my partner's family at Christmas: the table laden with strange foods, the games, the inside stories and misunderstood connections. It was only a little later that my partner had the same fish-out-of-water feelings when he met my family. Hilary Bluestein-Lyons gets it so right, and even though I know not-THAT Steve Martin, I think anyone will get the connection, banjo or not.

You have to hand it -- fur and all -- to John Busser for this brilliant bit of sketch comedy lampooning a classic horror tale and making it more horrifying: a time-share family with the requisite brats and high-end vacation expectations. And as a Floridian, I'd love to see this actually happen in the Magic Kingdom; take that, Ron!