Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

A dark comedy with engaging, detailed motions.The play starts off about suicide but finds itself focusing more on the breakdown of self-worth, the unexpected ways we detect it, check it, challenge it, discover it. There is a fighting spirit within us all that feels at odds with the workings of the world and the people in it. McBurnette lets a disturbing setup play out in an ultimately lively way.

The men in this script exemplify just about everything that is possible, impossible, regressive, progressive and, well, you name it, about the current and long-unchallenged state of sexism and misogyny in the arts. They may have their answers, one which changes, and that’s that. It’s a keen, deft stroke of the male response to defiance, as well as a somehow accurate - and, it somewhat feels, bizarre - portrayal of the view from the sidelines, from the bench, about women on the field.

The straightforwardness of the play, in an odd sort of way, caught me off guard. How bold of Hageman to display the stark differences between these two children so bluntly, and in an effort on Caroline’s part to connect. There’s a strange angle here, a cross-section of satire and tragedy, a kind of writing that left me a bit shaken. There are things happening here of which both children (in their own ways, and depending on the issue) are unaware of. There is a humanity that Hageman taps into, both beautiful and disturbing.

The thing I find most striking about the play is the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of its conflict. Friendships, marriages, and families of all kinds, all kinds, are reaching their breaking points over the terrifying rhetoric and inhumane policies of a nearly unprecedented administration. So be it. What must be done, must be done. The distress comes from the urgency in which action must take place, so urgent in fact that the repercussions of certain choices must be taken as they come, and the pain and process of doing good will take the hard path of reconciliation—especially for children.

The monologue about laughing is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve had the honor to come across in a long time, how abominable the circumstances that engendered it. This is truly heartbreaking work. From the moment Andie walks in, the play tells you a sin has occurred, an offense against god. This is an astonishing play, a work that pits its characters against morality of an ethereal, intangible kind. This is pure drama bred from real death and tragedy.

One of the most accomplished, accessible purges I’ve read; clearly and purely putting into words, dramatic and poetic, the pain and anxiety many feel about the current state of events. It is a shame that not everyone feels, or fights, this fear. The dependency on technology, the desperation for common ground, if not commonality, or shared perspective. This play reaches the fever of our times, the dense-ness or dense mess of manic depression, of a living, systematic, cyclical insanity. It is a reaction to hate that never should have been, but here we are. Add Valentine to your poets.

The violence is staggering but the satire is pure and deliberate. The fear of sacrificing one’s culture is the subject and it made my gut sink and churn. The irony of beleaguering an insult’s meaning is both breathtaking and breaking of humor. Euphemism becomes the drama at one point. A fair, even brilliant play about language regarding the ignorant who oppose it. Stubbles is an insightful playwright with a unique, deeply personal view of the oppressions which polarize the most human aspects of our citizens.

Simple in the best way, Stubbles lets us look at a connection so free of shame or immediate harm that we are granted the honest and genuine objectivity the interaction deserves. Beautiful and beguiling.

Gonzalez displays a deftness here that I’m afraid not everyone was already aware he has; his handiwork - not just in this play, but in others - shows his appreciation for irony, absurdity, subtlety, subtext, and nuance. This is actually a fine primer for those starting on his work.

We come to Wyndham for these moments, captured as if by Steve McCurry or Dorothea Lange, heart-and-soul piercing pictures of people the populace doesn’t seem to see. Like he’s drawing eyes from memory, providing poetry to their voices that are so easily and often obscured by sounds of wind or city. He’s a magnificent cog in the current workings of American Drama; and here he gives a character so charming (and despite the situation, very likely sweethearted) that it’s a surprise when he airs his grievance, and a stomach-turning one at that. I was rooting.