Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

I love a good battle of wits, especially with well-armed and well-trained opponents. A chance meeting on a park bench, two divergent views on literature and life, and we're off! What fun.

This is what happens when Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Marx Brothers team up with the company putting on "Noises Off" and decide to do up some real English-flavored theatre. Nothing is left to chance, so brace yourself for Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Bronte brood, The Beggars' Opera, penny-dreadfuls, Sweeney Todd, and references to all of them and beyond. It's a madcap overflowing treacle tart of confection and affection for this grand dame of questionable morals and origins and just bloody fun. You will savor every morsel, but leave some pearls for the dog.

This uncertain time has put stress on all of us in ways large and small, and this short play shows how in a gentle and touching way. It also asks what we are willing to sacrifice to stay safe and secure: can we give up all that hold us together? Eytan Deray gives us something to think about.

This is more than just a two-minute play. It is an ode, an elegy, made up of small but heart-rending memories, moments, remembrances, and you will know and see each one as they pass by.

This is a delicate but powerful play combining elements of "Dangerous Liaisons" and Edward Albee that keeps you reading all the way through. The characters are strongly drawn, fully dimensional, and even if you find yourself recoiling at times from them, you can't help but be drawn to them. The game in the title is really the whole story: what games we play with each other to gain advantage, to find love or meaning, or even just to amuse ourselves. The foreknowledge we have knowing what awaits them is even more compelling to the telling of the story.

This is a delicious monologue in every sense of the word, and you will savor every biting word.

There's a saying: if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. But that's the best part of this hilarious monologue by Glen Dickson: this poor guy cannot stop himself from digging himself in ever deeper with his chemically-induced attempt to impress a girl. What a great piece.

This series of rapid-fire confrontations is the distillation of every emotion we're going through, packed neatly in a fifteen minute play with characters we all know and probably are. Great job, Richard; this is one for the stages.

Talk about a date from Hell... Actually, Lee R. Lawing has fun with superstition, dating conventions, and trivial pursuit in this play that starts out as a romantic comedy and builds to a real for-sure climax. These two lovers were meant for each other in one way or the other, and it's both fun and a bit horrifying as we get to know them.

This story about two people who met under extreme circumstances with polar opposite objectives shows us that even then, there is a glimmer of humanity. The connection -- or even the bond -- may be tenuous, but, like a string of spiderweb, is hard to break. Scott Sickles knows exactly how to bring out the necessary elements so that there's much to see, to hear, and to learn in such spare detail and such a short time.