Avant-garde playwright Eugène Ionesco (1909–94) traced his love of theater to watching a Punch-and-Judy show in Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens as a child. He was enthralled by the puppets that “talked, moved, clubbed each other,” and the performances represented, he wrote, “the spectacle of the world itself . . . as if to underline its grotesque and brutal truth.” Igor Golyak’s Delirium, an adaptation of Ionesco’s 1962 play Délire à deux (Frenzy for Two), captures this signature blend of slapstick domestic squabbling while highlighting the human penchant for destruction and barbarity.

Marin Ireland’s Pre-Existing Condition is about the emotional aftermath of domestic violence. It is a quiet, unflashy play—75 minutes, sensitively directed by Maria Dizzia, with subtle performances from an ensemble of four—but no less devastating for its restraint. Lupita Nyong’o is outstanding as the protagonist, A: with fury, self-doubt, shame, and agony roiling beneath the surface, she strains at every moment to stay composed. The audience follows her through support groups, therapy, unhelpful family and friends, and the tentative possibility of letting herself trust again.

In Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love (1997), intellectual brilliance and unspoken longing collide as poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman confronts the love he has carried silently through a lifetime. In this rare revival, Zachary Elkind’s direction and David Greenspan’s mesmerizing performance transform Housman’s final journey into a poignant meditation on love, memory, and the price of keeping desire hidden.

French poet and avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau wrote his 1929 novella Les Enfants Terribles (The Terrible Children) in just 17 days while recovering from an opium addiction at a clinic. In Michael Gardner’s ambitious new stage adaptation, which he also directs, Cocteau’s dark, hypnotic fable explores the dangerous power of imagination, suggesting how unbridled fantasy and obsessive isolation can transform an internal refuge into a destructive prison.

In Stephen Sheffer’s new play Lean-To, strangers camp out in the titular structure during a hike. While the setting is rendered beautifully, the drama flops due to a script full of extended silences, platitudinous conversation, and ill-conceived character behavior.

In The Body of Mary: A Play in Three Acts (of God), Katie Cappiello reimagines the Virgin Mary’s origin story to examine the struggle over women’s bodies, reproduction, and who controls the narrative. Written and directed by Cappiello, this comedy brings together three women named Mary whose lives, separated by centuries, illuminate the forces of patriarchal control, violence, and repression.