Recommended by Scott Sickles

"When you've met one person with autism... you've met one person with autism." It's why they call it a spectrum, folks! Here, Osmundsen skillfully presents two people with autism and they couldn't be more different.

Frankin has known he has autism all his life while his former teacher/mentor William has just been diagnosed at 46. Osmundsen captures these two perspectives with tremendous accuracy and empathy, even when the characters don't have much empathy for each other. As such, the four characters frequently call each other on their BS making for an engaging, complex dance of honesty and evasion. Bravo!

The beginning of this play was, at first, quite surreal. I kept trying to guess the mystery, but the truth turned out to be so much more simple and heartbreaking.

Cathro paints a portrait of a toxic family situation during the most delicate time of the year. Both parents love their child and both parents have messed up. There's so much pain in these few pages, but for the characters it's pain they needed to face. They learn from it. They find a fragile peace. Perhaps we can too.

What a lovely play! Hendricks illustrates a lovely bond between brothers over time as well as how they relate to the universe and how the universe relates to them.

Some silent scenes should spark the imaginations of the actors, director, design team and, ultimately, an enraptured audience.

The dynamic between the brothers also requires a deep dive as the actors will have to communicate more with their presence and relationship to each other than with words. The words are so simple, when they’re there at all, but the history and relationships could not be clearer or more resonant. Gorgeous!

Combine a Quentin Tarantino crime spree with classic animated TV Christmas specials and blanket them under a fabulous Val Lewton title, and the ensuing chemical reaction is pure Monica Cross!

Father Christmas and St. Nick have different methods – or rather, M.O.s – of trying to instill the True Meaning of the holiday into the children of the world. What could have been an anti-consumerist polemic instead twists and turns into something far more clever, complex and surprising. A darkly comic gift for the ensuing Days of Christmas... and beyond!

Noel Coward meets Frasier in the wilds of upper-middle-class American suburbia!

McClain has fashioned a sophisticated comedy of ambition, rivalry, and hinge-joints as a dinner party unravels even before it begins. Wonderfully snide dialogue that’s as sharp as it is blunt, a terrific twist that informs the rest of the play (rather than turning it into something different altogether), and a resonant emotional core stemming from a complex history all serve to make ELBOWS a rich and satisfying repast.

Terrific roles and a great challenge to creatives to invent a posh world on a short-play-festival budget.

Oh the agony when your revolution becomes quaint. It's like being in a hard rock band and then, decades later, hearing your biggest hit on an adult contemporary station. But that's what happens to revolutionaries who win: their victory is normalized. Then taken for granted.

Crouch's radicals have seen and lived a lot. They've fought wars and lived as loudly as possible in order for their people (who are my people) to be heard! And now we are. So where does that leave them?

Equal parts funny and profound, current and nostalgic. Easy to stage with terrific roles.

On the bright side, at least things were going well for a while...???

A hilarious snapshot into the minds of people engaged with their bodies.

Chances are, you've been exactly where they are.

I remember it well: being NEW in NYC.

Diaz-Marcano captures the bewilderment of being a neophyte in Gotham with small but significant details that cement the location. (I still occasionally find myself walking a block in the wrong direction.) Most importantly and beautifully, he depicts how the City -- always busy, always moving with a purpose -- has its own welcoming spirit. It may be brusque, but it's always ready and waiting to lift you up. Well... most of the time.

This play makes even happier to live here.

If I had read this at the beginning of the pandemic, I might have felt it was too close to home. Now, nine months in, it feels downright nostalgic. One person in a panic while the other talks them from a ledge. We've all taken turns being each of these people.

Rinkel's play is a perfect time capsule and a reminder that we need to be there for each other, especially now when, 318,000+ deaths in, our reassurances simultaneously feel empty and necessary.

A resonant piece that would resonant differently with different combinations of actors. Try them all!

Sometimes our relationships with our pets are as complicated as our relationships with people. No matter the species, we don't have to like each other or even get along to be bonded... to need each other. And when that bond is severed, the emotions can be powerful.

Marchant evokes that irreversible loss and confusion. It's as vivid as the scenery, the weather, even the smell of what's in the ground. The people, their kids, the dog... this sixty seconds on one page will brand your mind like a memory of your own life. Simple and clear, a gut punch.