Recommended by Toby Malone

Sometimes you get the opportunity to rewind right back to the beginning of an admired playwright's career, to see what they have built early on that has led them to where we are now. 'Ruby's Baby Blue' is a very early play for TJ Young, written at school, but you can see the early seeds of his muscular, familial style that makes later plays like 'Dark Skinned Pavement' and 'Lyon's Den' so important. Here we see a master playwright when he was an apprentice, feeling his way towards his strengths, while still creating a nonetheless compelling narrative. Watch this guy.

Stories bind us, they transport us, they soothe us. In typical Max Gill style, the Thousand and One Nights transform into a different kind of survival tool as Aleppo endures the violence of 2016 siege. With humanity, care, and hope, oft-told stories distract, they charm, they offer the potential of better times. As Amir distracts Khadija from the inevitability that her husband is likely not coming back, the stories push that off for just a little while. Lovely as ever.

An incredibly raw, honest, open, and very funny account of addiction that is way more charming than it has any right to be. Steven Stafford opens right up and lays himself out for the audience to see in a manner that is cathartic and cautionary. With songs, jokes, and flair, this is a one-man tour de force.

As always, Nick Malakhow comes through with a powerful, muscular work that interrogates difficult subjects with an unrelenting eye. This tense, wise piece examines academic politics and the price of (and the power of) doing "right" when you are up against a machine so entrenched that success is a far-off hope. Particularly inspired is the setting in a private Quaker school, giving Malakhow the opportunity to probe at the edges of what Meeting for Worship offers to characters with trauma and stress bubbling just below the surface. As always, Malakhow is creating memorable, outstanding work here...

Monica Cross's reliably grounded, snappy characters ooze with personality at the best of times: here, she not only manages to create tension and mystery in the soothing touch of Trinity, but has succeeded in making this humble reader all kinds of hungry. A lovely piece.

A brilliantly caustic take on the vapid trend of celebrities making other people feel bad about their lives during lockdown. Kirsten is living her best life and to be very clear, she looks like she's having way more fun rummaging around for snacks at the back of the fridge than those smug celebrities do. So much fun.

Loewenstern takes a familiar scenario - newly divorced couple negotiating joint custody, civility and school choices - and adds a real-time frying steak and an ongoing discussion of the primal instincts that drive affection, that means we know where this is going but can't help but think that after the inevitable backslide that these two will just remain more confused than ever: but it's not their fault.

Dan Caffrey takes on a sensitive topic with finesse and imagination, exploring exactly what would have been at stake if the Virgin Mary escaped her husband and demanded of a mysterious doctor that he abort the child she is carrying. Tense, thoughtful, aware.

This is a razor-sharp, witty take on finding new love in unexpected places, and despite aggressive bouts of self-sabotage, managing to maintain one's own sense of self. Self-aware, relentless, and unapologetically humorous, Alana Corrigan develops in nine short pages a world we care for and a love that we believe has a hope. Great stuff.

Rejection season comes for everyone in the playwriting game: even Shakespeare! A witty, irreverent fantasy that ponders just how Shakespeare would feel if Marlowe made it into the Liverpoolooza Summer Shorts Festival and he didn't. Plenty of short play fun.