Recommended by Eric Pfeffinger

  • #matter
    11 Jun. 2019
    A terrific, ingenious, raw and poetic play that encapsulates a sprawling and vitriolic political divide as a grounded, human drama between two specific, recognizable people. Covers vast rhetorical and dramatic territory in just eleven pages.
  • Cambodian Rock Band
    18 Apr. 2019
    What a masterful juggling act this play performs -- a keenly observed character comedy, an uncompromising interrogation of morality on a global scale, and a kick-ass rock & roll concert -- all in the service of exploring and ratifying the power of art to make a difference in the world. Knocks your socks off in performance.
  • Residence
    6 Mar. 2019
    Such a strikingly affecting play -- bold and clear-eyed about adults coping with the consequences of their choices in a world of very real obstacles. Nothing in this play feels contrived or manipulated, and yet its seemingly relaxed plotting resolves into a tightly observed treatment of regret and accountability. Terrific, surprising, believable characters that actors will love to play.
  • Cardboard Piano
    6 Mar. 2019
    This remarkable play engages insightfully with the wider world on the macro level while simultaneously being an impeccably observed, detailed portrait of recognizable people living their lives. Moving and stirring and ingeniously structured.
  • The Wolves
    21 Jan. 2019
    Innovative and surefooted, built on a confident awareness that the most momentous drama in our lives often expresses itself through the most unassuming and mundane moments.
  • Bach at Leipzig
    21 Jan. 2019
    A brainy drama of petty ambition that goes to the heart of what art's all about, with a driving comic sensibility that's positively vaudevillian.
  • Our Child
    5 Jan. 2019
    The anxious experiences of regret and second thoughts and reduced opportunities, dramatized here with such immediacy, has a queasy universality. Coupled with the phenomenon of working poverty it takes on a sharp political specificity. The notes of hope and optimism at the end are complicated and welcome.
  • Next Year and Other Indefinable Things
    5 Jan. 2019
    Starts as a deftly brisk and funny slice-of-life, something that three young actors with good timing can really crush. But when things turn -- dropping what feels like a big bomb on these young lives -- the feelings are real and the anger is unsparing and the final moments, which could have been unsatisfyingly pat, are instead laden with emotional subtext.
  • I DREAM BEFORE I TAKE THE STAND
    1 Oct. 2018
    I first saw this play years ago; it's the kind of subject you'd hope would go out of date but regrettably it feels as electric and relevant as ever. This is the kind of thing theater's supposed to do: translate an idea into concrete, grounded drama with such immediacy that even audiences who think they already agree with the premise are discomfited and enlightened by the experience. Tight and relentless and necessary.
  • Gutted
    19 Aug. 2018
    There are three great comic roles in this smart, funny play with a pitch-black heart.

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