Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

An active opening engages us immediately as Marilyn Ollett cleverly introduces us to a club of women all trying to spend the little time they have with each other. Angela has a man problem and it's no joke, it's dire and Ollett gets our hearts beating at a very early stage. The comedy goes from manners to ribald in such sleek ways. The most outstanding accomplishment here is Ollett's vibrant dialogue that never lets up and is laugh-out-loud, and in between the smirk remains on one's face. Paula Vogel meets Pedro Almodóvar in this vehicle for mature female actors.

Arthur Miller meets the supernatural in this mysterious dramedy. Sibyl plays paranormal sleuth to her own surroundings as lovers Ivy and Mark reunite in a scene built up so romantically, with such detail, it's impressive how tender and charming Steven Goldman is able to warmly render it. Goldman then realizes his characters with so many features and colors you can envision them easily. When the ball drops and the drama takes over, Sibyl has to play interlocutor to the two in the afterlife. What follows is an emotional journey through reckoning, reconciliation, and resolve via the lens of US trauma.

This is a magnificent play. Reminds me of Sarah Kane. It has a dreamlike quality. Reminds me of Edward Bond. This is poetry. This is some of the best work I've read on NPX since Celine Song, like, five years ago. It runs on pure emotion, the subconscious, like art should. Christian Flynn has a brutal beauty in him. I've been searching for this stuff for a long time. It works as a revenge thriller, but that's not what it is. It would be reductive to call it that, though, it is. This play deals in the mythic. A MASTERPIECE.

James doesn't know what he's in for. Susan's effort to put the room in balance throws the room off balance. What Susan and her family don't know is that their dynamic may not be helpful to themselves. And this Preston Sturges-level farce complete with physical humor begins. What Rachel Feeny-Williams has done is create a vehicle to unpack the trauma change, heartbreak, secrets (kept, revealed) can have on us and the risks we'll take to avoid them. Susan has kept her family secret from James, but Sue and Lu are the heart of the play. Perfect build up to chaos.

For such heavy themes the first notable detail is the lively, fascinatingly, even naturally irreverent dialogue, which draws us in from the beginning. Willie is a captivating character, rendered to wonderfully heightened completion with his one-track mind. Norkin knows just how to build the scenes in so many satisfying ways. The historical, political, racial, and sociological aspects of the play are never overbearing or overwrought, everything has the tone of a spirited debate or family parley. The tension and mystery rise cleverly. The humor never lets up. The denouement on what it means to be a citizen comes together gorgeously.

As the famous movie quote goes, "Some people just want to watch the world burn." The character who sets up "meat puppets" on the internet is as terrifying as he is fascinating. Asher Wyndham does the piece well by inventing life-like (or the Onion-like) headlines and trolling responses: provocative and infuriating. Wyndham shows the ease and simplicity of rage-seeking internet behavior, and the sick joy that can come from it. The internet has this way of de-humanizing language itself into a vehicle of hate, ignorance, and most importantly here - goading. A cautionary tale on who to engage with online.

Benjamin Peel has done a beautiful job of rendering a motley trio of characters in order to let the issues of the 90s, although truly prescient to today, play out. It starts off moving with Gerald and Kelly at odds about climate issues, which is appropriate because this play is so much about the Land: the Land as Life. An interim for these lost souls to gather themselves up existentially. They deal with the issues they can't change, that make them different, which poetically makes them similar to each other: displacement, family troubles, values. A most wonderful, gentle, delicate play.

It's a tender tale of heartbreak finding its voice between two souls who need to find the time. It's about the slight and heavy sacrifices we make to take care of our partners. It's about the bickering we do between us over utilizing our precious time or spending it in ennui. It's about the secrets we trust with those we love. It's about all the time we spend trying to find true love. It's about who we see when we look into the eyes of our other. It's about believing your other will be there tomorrow. A most delicate play.

The play opens with us learning mom left. We're also introduced to the upset family; Jake the patriarch, Laurel the live-wire daughter, and Matt the new father. We meet Gil, the friend, then Nick and Jasmine, both here ostensibly to fix the up the house. Jake is hilariously inconsolable, but the dynamic grows lively amongst all of the characters, particularly after a case of mistaken identity. What follows is a kind of Oscar Wilde-meets-George Bernard Shaw-meets-Anton Chekhov both-sides-of-the-pond comedy of manners regarding assets, memory, past, inheritance, legal settlements, sex, property law, capitalism, debunking the American Dream/Myth and nuclear family.

Asher Wyndham's latest monologue centers a woman who's, well, horny. However, she has some very specific terms when it comes to her date making it home. What makes Wyndham so great is the almost covert way he gets the exposition out, you don't realize what it is. His character work is always stellar, like here where we know exactly what her night will be without sex, what her whole present life is without it. The stakes are clear. The ultimatum is Aristophenean, crucial, graphic, and understandable. Nevertheless, there is an evocative statement here about consent and reproductive rights, so listen.