Recommended by Claudia Haas

This is a sweet gem of a play with a friendly reminder to slow down, people! Look and see and smell those roses. Children will delight in Sam's adventures that all take place in his bedroom. Especially fun moments include the drum for Sloth's helmut, the Cheetah as a cop (arresting Sam for speeding) and Goo on roller skates. Nonni's rice pudding and Sloth's guidance are one of the many smiles of the play.

There's a nice little twist with each of the actors being both superheroes and super villains and never sure which they are. There's tremendous room for silly design and both young audiences (and young performers) will take delight in the antics of the characters. The heightened wordplay is matched by tremendous physical action: fake-movie-fighting, flying and fire-breathing. And isn't that what you want in a superhero play?

This is an engaging comedy that plays with love, sex and commitment at all stages of life. It's refreshing to see a role for a woman on the cusp of fifty exploring her sexuality and coming into her own. It's a twist on the coming-of-age story only the protagonist is a middle-aged woman! Even when dealing with secrets and betrayals, the play retains it lightness of being.

Adventure on the high seas: mutiny, buried treasure - it's all here in this female-centric Treasure Island. Yes, the pirates are women and as dangerous as the original pirates in Stevenson's tale. With the welcome addition of humor (it's a comedy - a murderous one), Jolly seamlessly weaves feminism, politics and 21st century pop culture references into the script without taking you out of the story. An ideal show if you have a pool of swashbuckling, strong actresses longing to play something other than "Juliet" (and the male roles are meaty, also). Bonus points if you do the chicken suit.

This is a delightfully wild and wooly, fast-paced romp of a play. Curses! Intrigue! Murder! Brigadoon! What's not to like? The kingdom is in danger and in a few hours - "something" will befall it. Earthquakes? Floods? A sledding accident? Nobody knows. As the characters try to stop the curse and save their kingdom, the plot thickens. This plays well for family audiences by adults or teens. The actors will really be able to sink their teeth into the witty asides that keep coming. The kingdom cannot laugh under their curse but the audience can. And will. A lot!

The play has characters in flight both from themselves and from their past. While a sense of loss haunts the characters, their methods of finding their way back are highly imaginative and poignant. The stakes are high for each character which makes for a fast-moving play that thoroughly engages you.

The themes of the play touched a lot of my nerve endings. I was drawn into the father-daughter relationship, the combination of "wanting to stay away from home" and "needing to return home" and ultimately - the need for reconciliation at some point in our lives. The characters are very human - flawed but striving to do better. Audiences members will find much to relate to and much to think about when they leave the theatre.