Recommended by Scott Sickles

You know the old saying, "you don't really know a man until you've spent the night handcuffed to him in the desert." Even after you wake up, even after a long car ride together, it still takes a conversation. Among Tony and Alex's skills, conversation is at the top of the list. Williams gives us two guys who are more or less on the same side but are still cautious. This is true of their circumstances and their conversation. A delight to read out loud and a gift for actors, the play presents a lovely nascent friendship.

I read this right after it was posted but needed a couple days to sit with it. Because it's a play about saying the things we might not or didn't get to say to people we love, people who shaped us, you can't help but reflect on those people in your own life. Williams fills this play with lovely details that show us a full life and relationship between father and son. The touches are elegant and moving. I'd share a mint julep with these guys any day but want them to have just one more with each other.

A poetic Job-like metaphorical tale of inanimate objects, animals, and natural phenomena that could capture the heart of the most die-hard literalist. What begins as an overt, even cartoonish, ecological fable soon reveals itself as a tale of physical and spiritual survival. Gill transforms a logical, mundane series of events into a magical tapestry of colorful characters and theatrical challenges begging to be staged with imagination and aplomb. He also conveys a sense of the actual world coldly lying out of sight and reach, as the sun itself, Alpha and Omega, provides warmth and solace. Beautiful!

Oh dear! It's rather difficult to be an upper class English family dealing with issues of inheritance while maintaining a good relationship with one's servants but it must be done, mustn't it, no matter wh-AAAAAAARGH! A delightful mashup of two great genres that have no business being together but are delicious nonetheless!

A delightful confection and a gift for comic actors. Weaver gives us the highlights of what would happen in this scenario from the ridiculous to the surprisingly sublime!

God, what an elegant monologue! There's something about the vernacular that instantly transforms the speaker into the character. She's written with such clarity and immediacy, she almost possesses you. What makes her so special, at least in my interpretation, is her utter lack of remorse. She tells a tale of horror quite matter-of-factly, but not without color! McBurnette-Andronicos paint a vivid picture of a whole community, even through the story focuses on three characters. The imagery is sunny, vivid, and terrifying, and the protagonist leaves an impression as indelible as the gut-punch of a story she tells.

A lovely snapshot of childhood fear and paternal love. In one fell swoop, Martin provides us with an origin story to that trepidation through quiet, private moments. You just want to hug them and tell them everything will be okay in the morning.

Aw, man!!! Gonzalez takes a great “what if?” and performs a miracle: a epistolary monologue that tells the lifelong story two brothers while imagining an impending title fight, somehow making it all unfold with the intensity and emotion of a 15-round championship match. He expertly weaves the past and the future into the now, when the stakes, physical and emotional, could not be higher. Then, at the apex of a hypothetical altercation, he hits the audience where we live. I cried like I’d been gut-punched. Give Gonzalez the championship belt and raise his hand in glory!

Sometimes righteous anger spirals downward into misplaced rage. There's no more delicate or resilience emotional ecosystem for such toxicity than family.

A searing little drama that covers a lot of ground smoothly and with great momentum. Infirmation is expertly and organically finessed so we feel like we're at the banquet overhearing actual conversations. The characters are complex, as are the circumstances. Solmonson creates a very real young woman in Loie who uses the lessons her father taught her to penetrate his anger. A beautiful window into a dark, precarious moment.

This play certainly lives up to its title, especially if you believe in the yin/yangs of love and hate, darkness and light, beauty and ugliness. Hovanesian packs a gorgeous, epic tale of young love, ancient myths, duty and guilt, blind revenge, and eternal longing in a few short pages.

The production demands should inspire tremendous creativity on a small play budget; the design meetings would be joyous! It could also be staged quite simply as the script provides a pervasive sense of menace amid a vivid world. All one has to do is trust the material. It's beautiful.