Recommended by Larry Rinkel

Well, you can't always get what you want, even if you've been married 40 years and hubby finds the ideal desert island that wifey has always desired. This play would be fun produced, but it would be a shame not to read it as well, since the private notes from playwright to director add to the hilarity. As does the fact that none of the characters are exactly the sharpest tool in the box.

Adorable. Think about all your relationships to people and possessions you're used to, and how you would never sacrifice or replace them however unreliable and difficult and just worn-out they sometimes seem. And then think how different, and less subtly effective, this charming play would be if Fridge were actually a person and not just - a "fridge."

The title is of course one of my favorite words in the language; the concept makes the last act of "Titus Andronicus" look tame; the situation would be ideal for the next baking championship on the Food Network. But if 2-6 pallbearers are needed, how much did Friedrich weigh for a replica of him to be turned into . . . . well, you'll have to read the play to find out. I hope they pass out slices to the audience, so they can share in the characters' grief.

(2nd rec, full play) An exuberant folktale of a feisty talking disabled chinook salmon who enlists a suicidal teenager to drive him to Canada, so that the fish can spawn in his natal waters and then die. Obstacles everywhere, each one overcome until the bittersweet ending, and a bond formed between boy and fish despite their many conflicts. Throughout the play is imbued a sense of the web of nature and the importance of fulfilling one's destiny. In San Luis's wonderfully written tragicomedy, Prince Two-Gill would be a great part for an actor who can convincingly portray a disabled fish.

Superb, in its combination of painting, music, and skillfully rhymed poetry, as well as its gentle satire on sex roles as inhabited by the cross-dressing novelist George Sand. Be sure to read the epilogue before Googling this fictional portrait by the superb Vigée-LeBrun. And though this monologue for three characters (one silent, one unseen) will play beautifully on stage, the artful stage directions confirm my belief that a play is as much a work of literature as of theater. Well-crafted, Mr. Kurtz!

Who is ever so anonymous as the cashiers working the checkout at [name your grocery store]. In about a dozen vignettes all starting with the same phrase - a challenge to the actor's sense of pace and variety - St. Croix creates a portrait that is alternately touching, zany, and funny. Who ever thought such thoughts would go through our grocery checkers' minds.

There's love here, but also a lot of bitterness from the dying man (Richard) and resentment from the younger (Devon), and where the love ends and the other emotions begin is a blurred line that's impossible to define. Richard's emotions are the more immediately understandable, but don't count Devon out; he's passed the first bloom of youth, so that the ending suggests he needs Richard as much as Richard needs him, and will be devastated when he loses him.

A charming and touching monologue about the need for all beings to feel wanted and appreciated, even in a time when only toilet paper seems to be in demand. Think about how you'll want to stage this (as a buyer eventually comes along to water the plant and take it home).

A lovely short play that subtly sends up all those plays about playwriting we so often see ("There are a lot of those." "Right? And never so beloved as by those who they are about"), while affectionately celebrating this sub-genre. But the loveliest spot is the expansive acknowledgment towards the end of how important the writer's companion is to them (I'm deliberately keeping my pronouns gender-blind), and how the writer needs the support and encouragement of their muse.

Vince Gatton paints a sweet and appealing portrait of a young adolescent from rural Kentucky struggling with emotions he can neither control nor understand. Steven Martin below makes the shrewd point that the mother is not the bovine oblivious hick she may at first appear. But the greatest acting challenge may be the Calvin Klein underwear model who must not only look the part, but must inflect his sole word of dialogue in so many ways. This is one case where emotional cues to the actor (and reader) are not only called for but essential.