Recommended by Tom Moran

A charming little piece about two men whose Grinder date goes off in an unexpected direction. A winning combination of sexy and sentimental, with some funny lines and bawdy repartee wrapped in a warm fuzzy. Also perfectly titled.

A timely and trenchant take on our current catastrophe, it's a Seventh Seal (or maybe Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey) for our time. Good and ominous fun, with gradual revelation of detail and a clever ending.

A sweet, charming romp that succeeds on the basis of witty character humor underlying a richly realized conceit. The human story is compelling, but it's the dynamic between the two dogs that really pushes "All Bark, No Bite" over the top: Eugene's aloof intellectualism is consistently hilarious (and reminds me more than a little of my own dog) while Bella perfectly encapsulates the flighty charm of the younger canine set. My only disappointment is in knowing what the schtick is before reading, and thus not getting the chance to figure out Eugene's identity for myself.

A well-structured, naturalistic piece that builds up to a fun and unexpected twist at the end.

Self-absorption reaches its logical extreme in this two-minute ditty about the end of the world. What will it take to drag some people off of their phones and out of their solipsistic bubbles? As the play wittily posits, absolutely nothing.

Whittier is a pretty weird place, and the play does a solid job using it as the basis for an entertaining story of female friendship (or maybe more...?) couched in a ghost story. I was impressed by the play's thematic consistency, in that the legend behind the ghost ultimately resonated with the simple human interactions on which the piece is grounded. It also uses Alaskan "characters" as background without turning them into obvious stereotypes.

"Chewie" may be the most referential play I've ever read. It's also funny as hell, using a "Star Trek" setup (despite the title) to drag us through pretty much every sci-fi trope of the last half-century, one tagline at a time. It all leads up to a pitch-perfect, wonderfully deflating last line that ends with the appropriate whimper.

Wonderful subversion of the masked hero genre. Shades of the Princess Bride in its mixing of a quasi-medieval setting with high comedy. Absurdist and compelling at the same time, and some terrific lyrics to boot.

The ridiculous story of Hollywood's worst director, told in compelling fashion. The songs are great - would love to see this staged - and the structure, featuring narration by a suitably pompous Orson Welles, raises the piece above mere biopic. I was a bit worried it wouldn't live up to the film (still my favorite Tim Burton movie) but I needn't have worried; while this covers much of the same territory, its take is fresh and endearing. As it turns out, there's enough crazy in Ed Wood's life to support multiple works.

Pointed, trenchant, and toeing a line between overt satire and sorta-almost-believable, this play hits all the right notes. Plenty of laugh lines, a terrific and telling soliluquy, a wonderful and well-timed reveal that raises the comic stakes considerably, and a great coda at the end make this one pretty much pitch-perfect.