Recommended by Scott Sickles

The play introduces itself with a butcher and his wife in bloody aprons... talking directly to us. They're perfectly pleasant, matter-of-fact even, as they unfold the story of their town. It's a good story. An unfinished story because the town has reached it's first ever crisis and we are bearing witness to it.

The atmosphere is very Shirley Jackson meets WOMAN IN THE DUNES. The imagery is vivid even if performed on a bare stage. It's a full meal in six pages and leaves you wanting more (in a great way), and worried for whoever discovers the town next.

IT HURRRRRRTS!!!!!

This groaner fest is delightful torment with vegetable puns ranging from the agonizingly obvious to exquisitely original. Every one of them wince-worthy!

I’d love to see a cast of children in school pageant produce costumes pull this one off. Relentlessly silly and shockingly well structured!

James is a lot more patient than I am. But this is not a fight with an asshole family member. James can be patient because he’s already won. He’s no longer a soldier, he’s a representative, and he executes his duties with dignity.

Baker wisely refuses to make Sandra a two-dimensional monster. He gives her a history making her a fully realized, horrifically misguided, three-dimensional monster. What’s especially powerful is she knows what she’s lost. The tragedy is she knows she’s right… or will convince herself she is.

“No… There are no other survivors.”

At some point people opted for silent umbrage instead of expressing simple dissatisfaction. Saying “no thank you” or “I’m not interested” took a back seat to seething until you explode.

Which is not to say perisistance can’t be annoying. But one can’t angrily lash out without poltitely asking for peace first. At least one shouldn’t.

Nathan should have asked. Then this potentially dangerous contretemps could have been avoided. But then so would its aftermath and that… would be sad.

Cole ratchets the intensity to 11 before taking a beautiful left turn. A surprising and moving journey indeed.

One thing people forget about Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Greif is that they are not linear or sequential. They come in any order, any number of times, and in mercilessly unpredictable waves.

Canu’s gorgeously structured monologue perfectly illustrates this chaos - how our sadness uses memory to take retrubution on our souls for loving people we are only going to lose.

What’s especially potent is how emotional strength is accompanied by honest pessimism. One’s knee-jerk response is “no, you will get through it” and THE WEIGHT tells you to save your optimism. This is real.

One astounding thing about this devised chronicle of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is that everything in it - a harrowing epic of invasion, war, endurance, terror, and death - happens in just over a two-month period. Then you realize horrible fact: these events were (at this writing) roughly a year ago and it’s still going on! Martha and her country are stil living like this with no end in sight. Her messages are filled with rage, fear, and flickers of hope that ignite and extinguish with equal suddenness. Plumridge has done a great service sharing this.

Is Arthur a toaster or is Arthur alive: a living sentient entity that not only thinks but feels and acts upon those feelings?

All I can say is: I got a chill at the end of this play and toasters do not do that!

You'll see what I mean...

This is an absolutely astonishing piece of writing. It should be performed by trans men and transmasculine performers everywhere and listened to by everyone, especially people who are anti-trans. Maybe it will help them understand.

In creating an incredibly specific character, Tirado-Ortiz spins a beautiful tale of transition, not only of a gender or a body, but of a life and everyone in it.

Extraordinary!

Timing is everything. Privacy requires preparation, even in a tomb. Dudebro philosophical turds have jagged kernels of truth. Ouch.

These are but a few of the many lessons conveyed in this adjustment to Shakespeare's classic tragedy of miscommunication and terrible time management. Already cited by upstart philistines as problematic in its presentation of romantic love, R&J gets Soucyfied with a "you think that's a problem? What if she wasn't dead?" approach to nuptial consequences and masculine priorities.

Day 5 of this marriage is going to be, as Shakespeare himself might say, "a real humdinger!"

Playwrights LOVE being quoted! Seriously, our life’s purpose to to write things down specifically so other people will say them… FOREVER!

While this play is a loving homage to NPX playwrights, it’s also a chilling cautionary tale about the dangers of AI “creativity” pervading the world right now. Apps that do the writing for you have gone from nonsense to coherence. What’s next? The HAL9000 Frankensteining the works of Shelley and Shelley into meta-Shelley?

It’s a daunting vision of the future. But I’m quoted in it, so it’s also rather sassy!