Recommended by Scott Sickles

It's late. There's been a disruption. Now someone's sitting outside on a snowy night nursing a bloody nose when someone else comes out to join them without wearing a coat.

We have all been to this New Year's Eve party.

Impulse control over the holidays is challenging enough. For recovering addicts, it's an entirely different struggle. The only choices you get to make are how, or even if, you're going to fight decisions your body has already made.

One doesn't watch this play so much as evesdrop on it. You can't help these people but you care and you hope.

What the Penguins of Madegascar are to vaudeville, these penguins are to Jungian philosophy. They are as funny to the reader as they are deeply serious to themselves, which is saying a lot! Matthew Weaver's glorious play, about a penguin who encounters a polar bear in her dreams/a vision/an accidental astralprojection, gives us three distinct characters who speak as penguins would if they were deeply concerned about concepts of mortality and destiny. It's also a loving portrait of friendship and a shared love of seafood. Totally worth spending money on penguin costumes!

OH... MY... GOD!!! Painfully hilarious portrait of two long-married people trying to spice things up. Great characters and sublime humor in a broad situation, while also being meticulously observant about the way men and women view and value sex. A terrific piece for actors over 50!!!

Adorable! Simply adorable! A wonderful sendup of parent-child (and specifically father-daughter) negotiations, using tradition and ritual as unconventional weapons. Ever-so-sightly heightened in a way that makes it even funnier and thoroughly entertaining!

Written - or rather, composed - in soaring, spiraling sentences whose apparent digressions only add dimension and richness to what is being said, Two Candles feels less like a monologue and more like actual witness testimony, so grounded in truth and humanity it is. The specificity of this woman's experience is so palpable, the only thing protecting the reader from being fully immersed in her trauma is the time and distance and grace she herself has put between that one tragic day and now. A remarkable read: brief and powerful in its beautiful simplicity.

It's like a screwball comedy where no one has to stand up. You can practically hear Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as the blithely insane Sally and the long-suffering deadpan Darren. A roller coaster of a play with great laughs and insight!

I hear that if you are familiar with the rhythm and repetition of Gertrude Stein's writing style, you enjoy this play even more. I suppose that's possible, but I'm not sure how I could have enjoyed this piece more than I did! Even without any familiarity with Stein's voice, the words in this play become music. The characters are at once highly stylized representations of historical figures and utterly human. The story is a resonant take on love that will seduce and endear itself to the most staunchly conventional audience. It revels in its own oddness while celebritating yours too!

Part romp, part tragedy, this delightful semi-prequel shows us the whirlwind of youthful friendship and romance leading to the events of Romeo and Juliet, all through the eyes of Mercutio. It's a wonderful exploration of how people, seemingly on the sidelines, can be dragged into major events, and how those whose fate can be viewed as "collateral damage" have stories and lives of their own. a joyous and moving experience!

If, like me, you enjoy death, slang, and administrative humor, then this play is for you! My face hurts from laughing. It's a joy for actors. The writing is a symphony of comic timing. Minigan puts a unique and hilarious spin on the Death Has Come For You scenario. A hoot!!!

A love letter to a highly idiosyncratic TV genre and to the trials and tribulations its leading ladies – the actresses and their characters; the ingenues, vixens, divas and matriarchs - endure over the years. Beautifully detailed, making it both hilarious and ultimately poignant.