←The Depot for New Play Readings

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.

Tom wants to flee but is immobilized, metaphorically and literally. Will Colin show Tom how to move again? That’s the primary question of “Invincible Summer,” a risk-taking drama about a concert pianist who must learn to live with Parkinson’s Disease. Creative and cinematic, “Invincible Summer” flows like memory, with scenes that are riotously funny and gut punching. Among the play’s many strengths are great roles for older actors and dialog so natural, it could have been recorded on a Manhattan street. Depot actors connected personally and deeply with this story. Audiences will too. Highly recommended.

“Camp Wonder,” Vicki Meagher’s chilling new play, demonstrates the mesmerizing intersection of totalitarianism and cult psychology. In the Gulag-like Camp Wonder, Derinda undergoes “re-education” to become a loyal citizen of the Feather Federation of States. Drawing on absurdist theater, Meagher depicts Derinda’s journey with hand puppets, patriotic rhetoric, and multiple avian images to explore the concept of individual freedom. Complex characterization contributes to an atmosphere of paranoia, while sound design and sharp dialog make the play suitable for stage and radio. In our era of rising authoritarianism, “Camp Wonder” is timely and powerful political art. Highly recommended.

In “Crazy in the Moonlight,” Melinda Gros employs witty and pointed dialog to bring to life the high-stakes world of fine art collecting, where treachery hides behind every canvas. On one night, friends gathered for a dinner party jockey for power, influence, and the social status that sterling reputation and wealth confer. As the moon rises, desperation sets in, and a couple struggles to recover their wealth and preserve their marriage. In the end, “Crazy in the Moonlight” is itself a work of fine art, a “painting-come-to-life,” where the authenticity of everyone and everything is always in question.

“Three Mothers” dares to dispense with romanticized views of pregnancy and motherhood and considers how sexual abuse, abortion, and postpartum depression affect women and their families. The drama’s center is the harrowing true story of Susan V. Smith, convicted of drowning her two sons. Hoffman masterfully reveals Smith as a complicated woman, both amoral and traumatized by abuse and poverty. To soften the play’s incendiary themes, Hoffman employs creative staging and sharp dialog. Highly recommended for festivals and theaters committed to social justice and women’s stories and to the attention of the Kilroys.

“This Not That” tells an intimate story about ambiguity and fidelity. In finely tuned dialog, Gemma Cooper-Novack reveals the intersecting and conflicting emotions that connect Daniella, Marshall, and Jessica, a charter school principal, fantasy writer, and teacher respectively. Feelings of loyalty, fear, and desire threaten to disrupt Marshall and Daniella’s wedding plans while offering the possibility of a less-contested partnership between Daniella and Jessica. Cooper-Novack’s restraint in language and plotting produces a drama whose delicate tremors intimate the cruelties of living in a world where one must choose either this or that.