Recommended by Scott Sickles

YEP! BEEN THERE!!! Once again, Martin proves to be the undisputed master of the one-minute form in this tale of limerence and punishment. One can't even be sure if there's malice involved, and it may not even matter. Pain is pain and the villain of the piece is Anson's heart. Love makes fools of us all. Unfortunately, that moment isn't the end of pain, it's the beginning. And we all know how Anson's going to feel for the rest of the day and a long time after. A powerful minute.

Dolls are creepy. Almost as unsettling as a teenage girl with an agenda. Academic and social competitiveness infect every moment of this attic encounter, as it becomes clear that a game between girls is actually a conspiracy. Red flags abound yet remain ignored as the guise of friendship disguises them, baiting a trap for a situation where AT LEAST one person will lose. I love a cursed/haunted object story and this one delivered shivers in spades while dissecting teen social dynamics. Creepy!

DAMN! This intimately horrific monologue about the hold mothers have over their sons, starts with turbulent unease and immerses us and the protagonist in paralytic terror. The Son lives in fear that he has ultimately and irrevocably disappointed his recently deceased mother in ways that will stay with both of them, dead or alive, forever. As he takes us through his crisis step-by-step, each recollection is filled with explosive urgency. A nail-biter!

The funny thing about an ellipse is that it can be a spiral in disguise.

In this take on The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Bray puts three characters (two in a car, one on the roadside) on what appears to be a collision course. And in some ways it absolutely is. But as time moves forward while events somehow repeat, the characters reveal more and more. Yet are these paths diverging or hopelessly asymptotic? Or somehow both? Steeped in inevitably and dread, YOU GOT IT RIGHT! is full of surprises!

Part One may be "The Dream" but all three parts put together makes for an exquisite nightmare. Few dream plays actually achieve the surreal impressionistic quality of real dreams the way this trypich does. The first half especially is an onslaught of ever-changing circumstances each more unsettling than the last. After that, the dreamscape becomes more grounded but no less volatile and dangerous. You can never be sure of the ground beneath your feet... if there even is any. A chilling hellscape.

The clock is ticking down on an impending birthday, and amidst the maelstrom of family life, two parents try to shape the chaos into order before the guests arrive!!! Yeah, good luck with that. Brathwaite creates a beautifully detailed realistic familial environment before catapulting us into even greater mayhem. As a stand-alone or a prelude to a larger story, SOULGLASS is a thrill ride that finds magic in the everyday.

The opening image is powerful, belying the gentleness of the title while magnifying its beauty exponentially. The title itself belies the richness of the piece for it contains multitudes. It works as an allegory, thousands of allegories, for intersectionality, unity, the delicate balance of resources , I could go on and on. Best of all, it tells a great story about two characters with the highest possible stakes when only one of them can succeed. An exquisite exercise in heartbreak and dignity.

As a hack whose second home is the Delta Sky Club, I FELT SEEN!!! The play accurately portrays the inherent disrespect of genre writers, even BY genre writers! And speaking as a proud genre writer, I was with them all the way. (All the way – see what I did there?) The banter makes me want to find the hidden gems in their work, and I'm totally shipping an action/romance collab after they collaborate on some action and romance themselves. I'll watch their stuff until they get back from... you know

I love a good end of the world story and the best focus on humanity over circumstance. Alles serves us a very sweet apocalypse. Lena seems to want the impossible - a first date with a decent guy the night before the last sunrise ever. But her motives don't stem from mere loneliness or nostalgia. She is reclaiming long-lost agency over her life during its last hours. And she sure picked the right guy for the occasion. If the world were ending, these are people you'd want to greet oblivion with.

We’ve all seen myriad afterlife plays where a newcomer to the netherworld is greeted by a guide to help them cross over. But I’ll bet you’ve never seen one as Looney Toons as this!!! I half expected Bugs Bunny's endomorphic Valkyrie horse to gallop by! Cartoon tropes abound, but the characters are both screamingly funny and universally heartfelt. Triplett pulls off a real tightrope walk of tone. Great fun for actors and I can't wait to see the desert backdrop in production. Or theJodhpurs!