Recommended by Christine Foster

The wit and playful intelligence of this piece are a delight. It's about hope and 'grounding' and chance and physics and biology and wonder all at once, and keeps the audience in a state of anticipation and curiosity - while smiling all the while.

I was deeply moved by the framing of this piece as much as the emotional content. The evocation of the rebuilding of the Acropolis after its destruction and a period of mourning gently segues into the laughter of children. The monologue has the structure and impact of a well-crafted poem, and that really worked for me.

A lot can happen in thirty minutes, especially if it's your last thirty on earth. Two men, a priest and a condemned man, take a chance on exposing truths they've been hiding from everyone including themselves. Both gain last minute insight while the tension mounts and the doorway to a kind of wisdom (and a kind of peace) does inch open. But in the end it's only to confirm that the only kind of peace and wisdom humans ever get is Partial. And that in itself is satisfying and right.

This piece starts with a fizz and keeps on fizzing. The dialogue is brisk and natural while the premise is delightfully absurd - somehow an entire school is caught up in a cross between the Truman Show and a Twilight Zone episode. There is a strong moral thrust, too, though it's never really clear what interactions are real, and it doesn't matter. Just relax and enjoy. Really intriguing.

A delightful salute to "Private Lives" but entirely worthy in its own right (write!). The dialogue sparkles and the intriguing characters perform a fascinating pas de deux, delivering many smiles for the audience along the way.

'Sex changes things' and 'we're all a walking bundle of psychological scars' are just two of the perceptive lines in this thought provoking piece about a socially mismatched (almost) senior couple. Maeve and Rob are likeable, vulnerable characters and their dialogue is as natural as their revelation of personal traumas that prove you can't live a full life without events that shake you to the core.

'All feelings are good. Including sadness'. Or so Charlotte tells the little daughter of her mentor in Brussels, a man she has come to love but can never have. O'Grady's is an elegant, insightful play about the inner life of the author of Jane Eyre and how she came to cope with her loneliness, her lack of life experience and her blighted opportunities with dignity and selflessness. The characters are warmly and delightfully drawn and the whole play is richly, if sadly, satisfying.

Really fun. I giggled all through Dylan's wondrous lack of boundaries and impulsive chatter as he digs himself deeper into what should be social hell, and then miraculously isn't. Or is his lack of eyebrows really giving him deep intuition? A warm-hearted and uplifting job interview if there ever was one.

A simple social game reveals the misunderstandings as well as the past and present passions percolating in the hearts of a group of seniors with history. This short play is of full of surprises and well crafted twists that make us care about the fully rounded characters, their present choices and their shifting futures.

A timely piece about re-examining how we spend our days and weeks which turn so quickly into years. And about not giving up when it's time to re-set priorities. A loving tribute to couplehood.