Recommended by Scott Sickles

Powerful, brutal, ugly portrait of white American racism. Dent doesn’t give us two dimensional KKKlowns. There are degrees to hatred and prejudice, and he illuminates the difference with grace without sacrificing accountability. Even though we only get to know these officers a little, we see enough to know how and how differently they were taught to hate. Horrific, suspenseful, and in its own way elegant. The images in this play with haunt you, anger you, and move you to action.

What I love most about this monologue is how it transports the reader into its world, and what a cozy world it is.

I read while preventively self-isolating during the omicron surge, and I really miss my coffee shop. Thank you, Allie Costa, for bringing me to yours.

And how cozy to have an amiable ex who still aims to please and a relationship that’s become what it should have always been. Plus cocoa!

I’m going to read it again.

It’s gems like this that separate the serious Star Wars fans from the casual ones, even long term casual fans like me. You don’t have to Google “red ball jet organ” but once you do, everything will make sense (except how I didn’t have one as a toy!).

Marchant paints a gorgeously universal, or at least galactic, portrait of long-term marriage, love, and inspiration. This would be a joy for actors, scenic, mask/costume designers, even makeup artists! But it’s especially a joy for us Star Wars fans in the audience, even us casual ones!

There’s a moment when you discover with absolute clarity What Has Been Going On This Whole Time… and it is joyous! For the reader, anyway. One can see why DeeDee is none too pleased about it!

The literal-minded among us will see this as a love letter to our misunderstood childhoods. It’s also a tiny paean to our allies who had to work to understand us, gently explain the gaps in our interpretations of the world, and stook by us in the dark while we leanred to relax.

Great roles for young actors. Beautifully atmopheric. Exquisitely tender.

You can see by the date that I’m writing this near the end of Year 2 of the COVID pandemic. After a year of open restaurants and theaters etc made possibly largely by vaccines. If it weren’t for the masks, you might not even know there was an active pandemic much less a surge (Omicron, for those reading this in the future).

Martin captures the plight of medical workers and their families pre vaccines, and it’s as relevant now as it was then. A simple, powerful, necessary conversation and a testament to the power of virtual theater.

One need not know upfront that Skegness is ranked as “the UK’s Wort Seaside Town” but after one reads this play, one will not be surprised.

Jack and Mary are only in their fifties, but seem prematurely aged by life’s quotidian challenges of family and work. They need a change but apparently only Mary knows how that. Plummer gifts them with a lovely, local vernacular dialect that helps steep them in history and life. The stakes are secretly high from the outset as every effort is made to halt the inevitable. And yet surprises abound! A lovely two-hander.

Not since Adam West’s Batman and Julie Newmar’s Catwoman have justice and love been so blindly handcuffed together. At least Opal and James don’t have a Robin to worry about. Their astrology on the other hand is cause for concern but whose isn’t?

This romantic comic noir is a genre-blending masterpiece of deadpan humor, relationship quibbles, and criminally shameless romance. Laugh out loud funny, once the actors manage to keep a straight face, audiences will revel. The burn between them may be slow, but it is hot and bright!

It’s fascinating and unsettling when apocalyptic (note I did not say “post”)/dystopian fiction is also a period piece about the recent past written while it was happening. But here we are.

Wagner reconstructs the early days of COVID while preserving them alive in amber. As the play progresses and Violet and Jack negotiate their safety in the world and in the space they now share, the common threads of their lives intertwine and they allow each other and the audience to see them as individuals. The final minutes are simple and stunning, a testament to connection.

I let out several guffaws on page one! But that was Kantor skillfully disarming me for the humorous and heartfelt meditation to come. Providing just enough mythological backstory to build the play's (under)world and put the characters' attitudes and plights in focus, she treats us to a kind of nerd/jock heart to heart for the ages. (Iphigenia is the Daria of ancient Greece.) Her yearning to understand her place in the world resonates profoundly. Achilles has his own grounding passions that put his gifts and heroism into perspective. The discourse is divine and the ending sublime.

It threw me. In a good way.

One is generally supposed to root for the plucky underdog and against the corporate Boss Man. But Sam comes in with such youthful entitlement, I had to wonder who the hell she thought she was!

Which turns out to be the point! The great thing is that Hayet allows lessons to be taught and learned on both sides, signaling hope for the entitled and the powerful to see humanity in each other while finding it in themselves.