Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

Well, Jack, you got me, and well done, too. The set-up, the execution, and the pay-off all spot-on.

This may read like a one-minute play, but in those seconds the perception of time and its passage takes on a meaning that will stay with you long after the end of the play. Very poetic and meaningful.

After reading/seeing this, I predict that every writer is going to frantically check the titles they've chosen for their plays or novels. At least the honest ones will.

You've heard of the willing suspension of disbelief, right? Well, Scott Sickles takes the trope that makes every melodrama or James Bond movie thoroughly riddled with a monstrous plot hole that we all eat up like bad movie theatre popcorn... and does it to a turn.

C'mon, admit it.... you've been tempted to use this trope, right? Right? Ah ha, I knew it.

Yeah, you've seen it all before. And that's the beauty of it. All it takes is a little imagination, which Scott Sickles has plenty of and uses to great skewering effect.

There's a moment in this lively and fun short play that I thought I knew what was going to happen, so when it didn't and went in a completely different way, I was laughing out loud at the twist and turns. Oh, what a way to go!

Knowing the story of an artist is a large part of understanding their work, and in this fascinating, almost stream-of-conscious portrait of the search for the real Grant Wood, Gary Arms gives us insight not only to that artist but to the art world and what goes on behind the easel. The finely-drawn characters, each with their own point of view of the artist, lead us to ask more questions, just as the eager doctoral student Charley does in his research. He gets more than he bargained for, but does he get the truth? There's the true art here.

This may be 'only a play,' but it is taut, scary and real in its calm and deliberate march to the conclusion. It may be very specific in the time and place, but it is timeless in its meaning and its lesson. It may be 'only a play,' but it's not that far from being a documentary.

This moment in the lives of these two people is both funny and very real. What could be a set-up for a one-liner gives us real characters and resolves the dilemma with wit and charm.

This is more than a monologue. It is a stream-and-scream of conscious and consciousness where we hear and can visualize everything going through this person's head and heart as he stumbles through the moment. And it is only a moment; the speed and intensity is breath-taking in both the literal and metaphorical sense; something to chill and hearken and inspire and doom all at once. We are drawn in and cannot let go. Stunning, as usual, from Asher Wyndham.