Recommended by Scott Sickles

A lecture I needed to hear and one I should probably real aloud to myself.

Soucy provides ample academic proof of the weight and substance of that which is so often dismissed as froth: good old-fashioned honest romance. Both idealized and catastrophized in history and literature, often simultaneously, there are lessons to be learned. Simple lessons, perhaps, but so very hard-won.

Subtle, sublime, intimate, and universal, this is a lesson we all should learn.

War is hell.

Even the little ones. The forgotten ones. The ones even the winners forget to write about. The internecine battles leading to a Carthaginian peace of awkward meals, sidelong glares, and a lifetime of Yuletide bitterness.

Even when both parties are wrong because the only tinsel that really makes sense is the long strands that look like cheap boas, but I digress...

Astride the beast of propaganda press the thighs of truth! Herein, a narrator reminds us how seemingly minuscule events, like tossing tinsel or assassinated archdukes, escalate into global schisms.

Soul-rending and bleak! A perfect Christmas.

It's exactly what the title implies yet so much more. So very much!

It could have been parody. The humor could have been obvious. But Richter uses a delicate hand and a deft touch remaining true to Dickens's characters. He doesn't change them so much as give them a new unexpected dimension. There's the officiousness, greed, and misanthropy... and then there are the flowers.

The time period, while never commented upon, adds a layer of pressure to the proceedings. A great depth of emotion resonates unspoken throughout.

It's an elegant piece and I wish I had written it.

"a Dopamine Attention Variability-style mind"!!!
I love you too, Monica Cross.

And I LOVE this play!

While dramaturgs takes it on the chin a bit (though stodgy dramaturgs must remember they are not the playwright, even if that playwright is long since molecules of ashes), full disclosure: when I read "There is no thought in the absence of time" my knee-jerk dramaturg's reaction was "well, that's not accurate." :-D

It's nice to think that Terran drama might outlast the apocalypse and be discovered, even appreciated, by culturally advanced life forms. Especially those who love a good Shakespeare nod. Bravo!

I remember what it's like to be Danny.

The play begins with a lie, not of malice but survival. Kids with ADHD give idealized responses rather than honest ones (for many reasons) because the truth will disappoint, and we've disappointed people enough. (Do all kids do this? Yes. Is it a SURVIVAL tactic for them? It is for us.) "Why didn't you do this? Why did you forget that? Aren't you listening?"

Cross gets everything right about ADHD - the struggle to complete tasks, the emotional flare-ups, etc. -- and especially the ebb and flow of childhood friendships. Lovely.

Don’t read this just once. Go back and read it again. Not necessarily right away, but certainly while it’s still lingering. And linger it will.

The Christmas Family photo was fortunately not something I was subjected to growing up, but reverse the ages of the characters and these two could almost be my sister and me: a "good" child whose function is to stabilize and a rebel who refuses to. Blevins tackles parental narcissism, sibling bonding, and closeted gender fluidity (or any aspect of personality displeasing to a rigidly superficial parent) with surgical precision.

Read it again.

You had me at the exclamation points!

But, Deb… two people lovingly proofing and editing together… debating substance, subtext and structure… all while marking up a hard copy???

Mrs. Cole, you’re trying to seduce me!

On top of all that… and all the delightful banter and scorekeeping… the revelations of private truths behind the friends and family spin… is the perfect payoff to a sublime setup.

Unabashedly sentimental without being saccharine or maudlin, it’s a lovely portrait of marriage and family. A delightful holiday gift!

Unwrap this one early!!!

Oh Joey and Pacey… We didn’t know how much we wanted you together until you were and everything we thought made sense didn’t but it was okay because this new reality made so much more sense and Jackson aged much better than van Der Beek anyway, at least during the FRINGE years, and God that show was amazing at bending and blending realities, and while Jackson’s had a reliable career, Katie’s post-Creek life had an extraordinarily different arc.

Oh, I’m not gonna talk about the play. Or have I been talking about it?

Read this!

Gatton was written a profoundly sad tale of a misunderstood genius, undermisappreciated by ignoramic inferiors he must rely on lorem ipsum, while they inextanly and uquoterically dismiss his ischemic knowledge to askance their own egos. Idiots, indeed!

Actually, he’s done no such thing. HI-Q beautifully captures the apocalyptically high stakes of high school extracurriculars. If you don’t know a Tommy, then sadly you probably *were* Tommy. Or you were just lucky! (I would like to take this time to apologize…)

A glorious character study of social and (pseudo)intellectual pecking orders. I loved it maxima culpa!

A little boy. A department store Santa. And a scavenger hunt in a mall. All through the mall. On stage.

What an opportunity for directors and designers! What a gift!

I pictured cleverly painted trompe-l'œil – OO! Maybe they can be REVERSIBLE! Or the mall could be made of actors! Or the whole thing could be mimed and imaginary. Whatever best serves the story.

And what a lovely story. I didn’t know exactly where it was going (I’m a catastrophist and a lost child in a mall…) But this is a straight-up Christmas confection!

Sweet and delicious!