Recommended by Doug DeVita

My God, this is gorgeous. Brennan plays expertly with our expectations, delivers a beautifully unexpected twist, and simultaneously breaks our hearts and uplifts our souls. A perfect little gem of a play, with two wonderfully layered roles for two performers to embrace. Just… gorgeous.

Oh, this is dark. Very, very dark. Both very, very funny and extremely disturbing, Bronson paints a picture of the underbelly of reality TV – and the people who populate that world both on and off the screen – with a brush made up of tiny needles and shards of glass. An extraordinary work that provokes gasps of laughter, fright, and awe at the playwright’s brilliant audacity.

A surprise birthday party turned into a memorial service… As stories like this proliferate because of senseless gun violence, words continue to fail me. But not Lucy Wang, who, with her passionately beautiful, angry-yet-touching words paints a searing portrait of America today. As one of her characters says: “I hate the new normal.” So do I, Lucy, so do I. Let’s all do something about it. But let’s all have cake together first.

Anyone who has had to deal with aging parents knows this play. Feels this play. Has lived this play. Bittersweet, touching, heartbreaking, and yes, funny. And terrific roles for older actors.

A visceral punch to the gut, this monologue hits all the right notes about how it feels to be ignored. Heartbreaking but never maudlin, it’s a tour de force for an actor.

50+ years of a relationship distilled into a brief 5 minutes that nonetheless convey a lifetime of love, pain, dependence, happiness… So beautifully rendered, with two roles for older actors that are meaty and vital. So touching.

Poor Gwen, the control freak who has absolutely no control over any aspect of her life.

This is a marvelous comedy, absurdly, grandly theatrical but with bite, and non-stop one-liners which are not only howlingly funny, but deeply rooted in all of the character’s problems, pain, and fears (especially Gwen), and the seriousness with which they take them (especially Gwen.) That Polner sustains this level of humor throughout without ever losing sight of the play’s messages and themes makes this a master class in comedy script writing. Oh, how I’d love to see this staged.

I recently attended a Zoom reading of this new musical, and was struck by its passion, anger, humor, and timely subject matter, as well as its tuneful and varied score.

Oh, how I love fictionalized stories of Old Hollywood, and Tamar Shai Bolkvadze gives us a wonderfully scintillating version of one of the biggest Tinseltown scandals of its time – and does it with such authority one believes it all happened the way she paints it here. Both theatrical and cinematic in its scope, feel, and structure, the events of the play may have happened 100 years ago but by focusing on the lesser-known player in the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle affair, the titular Virginia Rappe, Bolkvadze has created a remarkably fresh, contemporary, and exciting work of art.

Catherine Castellani is in wonderful form here: LEVEL UP is at once hilariously funny and bone-chillingly prescient. It is a testament to her skill at characterization that at times I was not quite sure who’s human and who’s AI, which for me added to the slightly uneasy fun. I imagine when staged it will be even more enjoyable. And thought provoking.