Recommended by Christopher Soucy

There’s a moment after you’ve enlisted, but before you leave, when the whole world is on pause. Every friendship is a long goodbye. Steve Martin has distilled those quiet, surreal moments when the inevitable is just around the corner. A brilliantly measured moment.

Wow. I was warned. But I wasn’t prepared. What a powerful piece. There’s a lot of metaphor at play here. Who we are, who we were, and never the two shall meet. Colette Murphy has a true knack for natural, snappy dialogue.

What a wonderful back and forth. Crisp, funny, and thoroughly revealing. So much Character packed into so tight a script.

Aphrodite offers up pillow talk with her head resting on clouds. Mathew Weaver gives us the adults only version of ancient history from the goddess herself. Thoroughly enjoyable… or should I say pleasurable? What a show this would be to watch!

Curses and reverses. What a hauntingly perfect fairy tale. Brava to Samantha Merchant for navigating familiar waters with a new vessel.

I just might need a cigarette after reading this, and I don’t smoke. There are ways to capture passion, urges, urgency, hunger, aching, longing, and flat out want, but few have done it so well. Miranda Jonte has replicated the ragged breath and dizzying desire of physical desperation in a rhythmic ballet of words. Paced like a furious sexual encounter, pulsing with ecstasy, this is a word orgy that thrills. I imagine it would draw all the attention of any audience who witnessed a performance.

Cat and mouse games are best when the stakes are all or nothing. This is a classic noir story with a femme fatale and a hard boiled detective locked in a most dangerous liaison. I loved the playful back and forth of the characters and the casual revelation of diabolical predilections.

A pitch perfect prequel. Exploring a very possible “what if” scenario that instantly became canon to me. At the heart of this examination of the title characters is the idea that love binds us together, often times against the rest of the world. And those chains are stronger than anything hell can devise. I loved this piece. It was heartbreaking and redemptive.

Lyrical, dreamy, and bittersweet. Like an old, sad song that is instantly familiar the first time you hear it. This loving presentation of grief and recovery is a banquet of memories and emotions.

I had remarked earlier this very evening about the poetic quality of Miranda Jonte’s writing, and here I am reading a living, breathing, ode to loving and longing. It captivates and undulates, rhythmic as breath when you’re breathless, as beautiful as whatever makes your heart beat faster.