←The Depot for New Play Readings

In “Tiny Empty Nest,” an ordinary pair of empty nesters, Ben and Claire Booker, attempt to repair their marriage by competing on a reality TV show, Tiny Empty Nest, in which middle-aged couples build and live in tiny houses. Steeped in action, with inventive staging, zippy dialog, and a beautiful pictorial quality, David Beardsley delivers a clever, funny, and ultimately touching examination of mid-life crises that never takes a wrong step. A sure crowd pleaser, “Tiny Empty Nest” offers companies of any size great roles for older actors and exciting opportunities for production and design teams. Strongly recommended.

“In This House” is a beyond-brilliant gift to actors. Through the lives of three women, Girard evokes a South Boston neighborhood: lunch lady Jessie, her life-long friend Maggie, and her college-aged daughter Lynn. When Jessie opens her home to cancer patients and their families, the once-stable relationships among the women list, while the visits of Lenny, a New Hampshire farmer, threaten to capsize Jessie. In exquisite language, Deirdre Girard renders the gifts of vulnerability and its costs, and we learn, for Jessie and Lenny, as for us all, there is no free lunch. Strongly recommended.

An automated radio station in Iowa represents the deadest of ends for Chris Wood and Loralie Kent. Then one Saturday, they wait for the arrival of Mitch Maclay. In this surprising one-act play, Craig Bailey covers a lot of emotional ground. Chris and Loralie argue, order take out, and fly paper airplanes, but as the shadows lengthen, past sorrows make way for hope, and Chris and Loralie discover how to set their lives in motion. Moving and unpredictable, “Mitch Maclay Sings Just for You” offers great roles and powerful monologues. Suitable for high school programs. Highly recommended.

David Guaspari’s “Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents” packs plenty of laugh-out-loud moments into fifteen minutes. Set in Vienna on Walpurgisnacht, a shady character, Mortimer Todd, visits the home of Sigmund Freud and upends the household. Dead goldfish, loaded guns, and charades ensue, fodder for Freud’s impromptu analysis of his guest and his ongoing treatment of Minna, his sister-in-law. Guaspari’s brilliant word play and deep dive into psychoanalytic theory is Stoppard-like: erudite and completely entertaining. Best, audiences need no knowledge of Freud’s theories to enjoy the romp. And how does it all end? With a cigar of course.

Are backstage fairytales possible? Adam has written a play. It’s about him and his ex, Celeste, and it’s about to premier in New York. Celeste, a Broadway star, threatens to nix the production if the play rings false. What follows is a duel between two brilliant artists who connect most truly in bits of playful fiction. Knowing and highly theatrical, Michael McGoldrick’s “Backstage Fairytale” walks a tightrope between humor and heart and never slips. A gem for two comedic actors who also can play in a minor key. A five-star crowd pleaser.

O’Felia has seen one too many productions of “Taming of the Shrew,” and this time, she takes action. Breaking the fourth wall, she directs the characters to rewind “Taming’s” most famous scenes and shows Kate how thoroughly Petruchio has brainwashed her. Latham knows her Shakespeare and understands abusers, but through creative storytelling, she treats heavy subject matter with a comedic touch, and the result is a clever and funny head-on collision of Elizabethan verse and sensibilities with 21st-century slang and feminism. Great roles for 4 actors. Highly recommended, especially for companies that specialize in Commedia dell’arte.

Seanan Palmero Waugh reveals a wide world in ten minutes. Set in a summer camp’s kitchen walk-in refrigerator, “Crock Of” plumbs veins of privilege, class, and gender. Pranks are played, tables turned, and hearts broken as Lily and Kat explore social power in a bland conversation about working the salad bar. With authentically rendered teen voices and emotional candor, “Crock Of” exposes the hollow values at the core of youthful angst. Strongly recommended for high school and college audiences.

Ostensibly a love story between two Millennial Jews, Chelsea and Henry, “The Birthday Game” establishes suffering and struggles for power as central to human experience. Heartsore by her father’s infidelity, Chelsea embraces the philosophy of a conservative Catholic professor, “the salvation of violent death,” while aspiring novelist Henry defends the redemptive possibility of progress. Set before 9/11, when peace between Israel and Palestine seemed possible and a Jew had been nominated for Vice President, Judah Skoff’s multi-layered drama lays bare that era's naivety with vivid imagery, piercing monologues, and the surprising game of the play's title. Strongly recommended.

In Germaine Shames’ rich imagination, 110 Columbia Heights is both an historical address and an otherworldly theatrical space where the ghost of Emily Warren Roebling (1843-1903) meets the Modernist painter Peggy Baird Cowley (1890-1970), and together they help the poet Hart Crane (1899-1932) suppress his demons so he can finish his masterpiece “The Bridge.” Playful, affecting, and haunting, with characters who rhyme with our lives today, “110 Columbia Heights,” like the Brooklyn Bridge outside the apartment’s window, memorably connects characters and audience through time and space. Strong roles for women and LGBTQI actors. Highly recommended.

In ten minutes, Jack Rushton’s “The Difference” fillets a marriage with a ruthless knife. In sharp and piercing dialog, the couple, Walter and Elise, expose every pretense of affection, concern, and intimacy between them. The emotional impact is all the more brilliant because Rushton never reveals the knife or the hand that wields it. “The Difference” is part of a series of plays about Walter and Elise, well worth a company’s time and exploration, either staged in an intimate space or on Zoom. Highly recommended.