#10. Intimate Exchanges
By Alan Ayckbourn
Starting with one character's decision of whether to smoke or not smoke, British playwright Ayckbourn's ingenius play cycle follows 10 characters (but only two actors) in no fewer than 16 permutations of the action — amounting to 16 different plays. All but unproduceable — yet Ayckbourn himself oversaw all of them for New York City's Brits Off Broadway festival in the summer, a once-in-a-lifetime event that constituted a bracing affirmation of this unique artist's theatrical imagination.