Recommended by Alice Josephs

Weibezahl might say you’ve got to be carefully taught from earliest years to crave the latest must-have toy according to your ethnicity, class and gender. But the writer packs the range of issues into well defined female characters and a recognisable situation. Three xdollsx moms out shopping fight over the last girly toy on the shelf when civility is replaced by red-in-tooth-and-claw consumerism as they seek only the best for their kids. Funny but seriously thought provoking.

Using the Thousand and One Nights framework, And Shahrazad Broke Off… is structured as a story within a story - the terrible situation of a sister- and brother-in-law trapped in a besieged city and the story told of how two brothers decided on a course of action. The magical stories, the breaking off in the middle and the destiny of the original storyteller - survival or beheading - all take on new meanings and layers in the updated Syrian circumstances in this heartrending tale about the destructiveness of men and the power and powerlessness of women and stories.

From Russia with oil of cloves, Marathon Man meets James Bond meets Our Man In Havana in this espionage tale where a company man finds a simple dental appointment turns into high stakes’ international courier work. Grappling with a toothless predicament, the businessman does his patriotic duty and rises to the situation giving an actor a unique linguistic challenge in a pacey piece set in the debrief with two US spooks. Funny and painful (literally) in equal measure and a role for a strong comedy actor aided by the pair of equally adept straight men.

A Boyd life, or rather a YouTube chronicle of a youngster growing up in blue collar America. Funny, sad and touching, with any politics - his biggest number of hits comes from a controversial part of American culture - worn lightly as we get to know the characters. An affecting piece about an individual’s survival, floating in the flotsam and jetsam of life, as others either disintegrate or are plucked up by corporate America.

An exquisite, simple-to-stage short, imaginatively capturing both the moment before life and after death of two connected lives from different eras and continents. With a light touch, even the title shows the start of a more global outlook mirroring a family’s changing outlook and adding another layer to the characters’ universe. With its delicious variations on the grumpy-grandfather-who needs-updating and afterlife-waiting-room tropes, this is a play cannily constructed to melt even the hardest of hearts with two characterful roles at either end of the age spectrum.

Using a few brief pen strokes not only does Larry Rinkel introduce years of office colleagues’ lunches past in the same Chinese but we’re also given a window into the very American life of world weary proprietor Tammy and also the ambience of a rival restaurant. Directed and played in the right rapid rhythm, this dissection of random eating priorities should escalate audience chuckles into belly laughs. A clever little play with quick-fire dialogue and take away characters in the best possible way.

Positive+ tackles the tough subject of teen pregnancy through believable characters and believable reactions with a cliffhanger ending. This works both on a dramatic level with multifaceted roles to stretch two actors appealing to a wide young adult and adult audience but also, without being preachy, as a very visceral educational tool. A piece of great clarity where the responses from the young man and woman ring true and the clever framework of having to wait 10 minutes for test results ratchets up the stakes and a challenging reality.

At the door of a drag club, both Leah and Chava are outside the mainstream, something compounded by their furtive cigarette smoking. When their lives collide, they seem only linked by their tobacco habit, but gradually through the verbal and the visual, far more of the unexpected emerges. A slow-burner and a touching vignette with a different riff on opposites attracting in this seductive play about an unusual but entrancing seduction.

Clever, sassy and adventurous, both audience and cast will have a blast with Bride of Pinocchio, an engaging and colourful family entertainment - a 21st fairy tale. With a nod to an enormously successful old Hollywood sequel, this fast moving piece recaps the original Pinocchio story and then concentrates on after the ‘happily ever after’. The three-dimensional characters suffer heartache, disappointment and, in one case, death but in a child friendly way where death definitely loses its sting, math becomes fun and all ends happily with a final bow and a light touch inclusive message.

Playing with stereotypes with serious intent, this play is an engrossing drama with recognisable characters which takes unexpected turns and works on two levels. The story of a high school nerd who after honourable military service writes a bestseller. But also asking how much a nation’s story, especially a ‘victorious’ nation’s story, is manufactured from literary stereotypes and a nation’s audience consent to, even collude in, a narrative becoming a ‘legal’ history, along with the spoils of war. With equally weighty roles for four actors, People Of The Book is a challenging and always enthralling drama.