Recommended by Doug DeVita

  • COOLER
    17 Feb. 2024
    Houk tackles toxic masculinity here with his accustomed caustic wit and singularly off-kilter view of the world, and proves once again he can write straight male characters with strength, heft, and grit while being unforgiving of their sometimes idiotic foibles.
  • Sun, Moon, and Stars
    5 Jan. 2024
    This trio of ruminations about the various aspects of love is a wonderfully theatrical work, rife with heightened language, witty verbal ripostes, wonderfully apt homages to other writing styles/authors, and deep, universal questions tossed off with a sure, light hand. By turns funny, charming, touching, even at one point horrifying, this would be a blast to direct and perform, and a delight for its audiences. Bravo, Ricardo!
  • Eight Tales of Pedro
    16 May. 2023
    This is a gorgeous piece of theatrical storytelling; both intimate and epic, Garcia’s characters and their tales settle into one’s heart and stay there. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
  • Brompton's Truth
    3 Feb. 2023
    One minute of delightful – and excruciating – truth, beautifully done.
  • But Soft
    29 Jan. 2023
    Scott Sickles wrote: “This is the best Scott Sickles play Scott Sickles didn't write.”

    He’s right.

    I love the subtle, tender, somewhat naive eroticism simmering under the surface of this piece; this gives the play those ineffable Gattonesque qualities that allow it to stand out from more Sicklesian fare. Highly recommended.
  • States of Grace
    20 Dec. 2022
    Expertly navigating shifting times, places, and emotions, William Triplett's STATES OF GRACE is a deeply moving, sharply observed work of art. Its richly drawn characters any actor would give their eye-teeth to play, as well as the scintillating dialogue they are given (beautifully crafted with marvelously graceful, efficient, and nearly invisible exposition) help make this another Triplett win, one I'd love to see staged and can highly recommend.
  • E-Mail: 9/12
    16 Aug. 2022
    More than twenty years after the horrifying events of 9/11, it still hits home with terrifying immediacy. This play is a touching, moving, and very human work that captures the horror of that day and the immediate aftermath with graceful theatricality. Highly recommended.
  • The Sugar Ridge Rag
    10 May. 2022
    As enjoyable as plays are to read, they are meant to be performed; interpretations by a director and their cast are bound to differ from the preconceived notions that come from reading a work, and seeing Williams' THE SUGAR RIDGE RAG in performance at the Lab Theater Project recently revealed so many more levels to this touching story than are apparent on the page. A powerful piece of writing, the production pointed the way to what the script could be when performed – a heartbreaking, engrossing, and thought-provoking piece of theater.
  • Maeve's Camellia
    3 Apr. 2022
    Symmetry is a word that comes up frequently in this beautiful, asymmetrically symmetrical two hander. Ruyle delineates a burgeoning relationship between two wounded 50-somethings with a delicate hand; the work is both effortlessly funny and deeply moving.
  • The Admission
    16 Feb. 2022
    Oh, the humanity of the sainted. The unvarnished, dirty little secrets of one exceptionally lauded nun in a third world country are exposed in this hilarious rumination from John Busser, here working with his usual rapid fire sense of humor intact but with deeper layers of meaning, layers that lift the piece into the realm of the seriously sublime. Every single word works on two or three levels at once, and the result is intoxicating. To say I love this play is an understatement; it may well be my favorite Busser work. So far.

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