Recommended by Dan West

A dilapidated building on the verge of condemnation, a "lost" Shakespeare play of dubious provenance, and a production budget that has somehow gone AWOL. These are just a few of the troubles that the cast and crew the latest Thornfield Community Playhouse production are faced with when the vengeful spirit a long dead actor arrives. A fast moving and fun full-length farce about what it takes to make theatre both practical and sublime

A elderly, bedridden professor awakes from a fever dream knowing that his days have reached their end. As he recounts to his young female caretaker a tale from his youth of graveyards and ghosts and love and loss, they both come to the realization that the line between loneliness and fulfillment can be a thin one. A short, poignant play about missed opportunities and the regrets that can haunt you for a lifetime

It’s the wedding of Double Millennium. The end of days has come and the Messiah himself is ready to tie the knot with his beloved; and, with three of the Four Horseman at his side (Pestilence is out sick), nothing could possibly ruin the big day - except perhaps Chad. An irreverently hilarious takedown of Christianity, the institution of marriage, and Alpha culture. Revelations has never been so provocative (or funny.)

The mythological Medusa was a monstrous temptress whose evil gaze could turn a man into the hardest stone. In Scott Sickles geriatric sex comedy of the same name, the female lead Mavis’ harsh glare has much the same effect on her gentleman, Thor. After a date gone wrong turns into an awkward, pitfall laden night of physical coupling; our two senior singles are left to decide if a long term romantic relationship can be built on a foundation of mutual loathing (or something like that). A fun, cleverly written anti-romcom for all ages.

“Quiet Tonight” is a vampire play about the relationship between those left behind once the vampire has been defeated (but left unslain) and the pieces remain to be picked up. What if the monster is what brought you together? What if it was a person you both loved? That is the dramatic question Mathew Green is asking us. And it’s a question that I am not sure any of us would be able to answer. An enthralling one-act play.

In this modern day update of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Jonathan Ziese relocates early-17th century Vienna to a pandemic era Texas boarding school. With the long time principal away on sabbatical, Pine Bluff Academy’s student body president Charlotte is forced to test how far she is willing to compromise her own principles to protect her brother Percy from the less principled vice-principle who has been left in charge. This strongly written adaptation does a meritorious job transporting the most notable of the Bard’s “problem plays” into the age of #MeToo.

The mixture of quirky humor and pathos makes this darkly comic fantasy a real winner for me. Floyd-Priskorn’s Shop in the Darkness has gathered four uniquely compelling and fun characters for a witty and insightful exploration into the space that sits right at the intersection of darkest depression and the last light of hope - and lets them find reason to go on. The tone and spirit of this piece remind me of George Saunders at his best.

YouTube sensation Monst3r and his team have given away hundreds of millions of dollars to charity on his channel and have made millions more while doing so. But just as it seems that nothing couldn’t challenge his online empire, the viral “philanthropist” gets exposed for behavior sordid enough to completely destroy his finely tuned reputation. Gibbs’ wry and prescient writing takes down everything from cancel culture to viral apology videos and leaves you laughing from beginning to end. A comedic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions for the influencer age.

Mark Wolfson has traveled through time from the 2020s all the way back to 1840s Ireland with a message for his 11 x great grandmother, Sally Reardon. Okay, so maybe it’s not a message he brings. Maybe it’s more like a bunch of questions, and some confusion, and a bunch of words that haven’t been even Ted yet like “movie”and “influencer”. He definitely brings along a bunch of laughs for the audience. A time-travel comedy that dares you to ask “what happened to the hotdog anyway?” This is a really fun ten-minute piece.

really fun 10-minute piece.

One of the foundational principles of Improv is that they are no mistakes. I wonder if Jane still feels this way after this particular comedy show, which keeps finding ways to repeatedly jab its rubber knives into her most soft and sensitive inner scars. You start out laughing at the humor of it all; but then, as Jane’s comic mask slips, you realize that things here are nowhere as funny as her troupe partners P & B have been making them. There is some real pathos hidden within this outwardly comical package.