For The Great Recession, currently at The Flea Theatre, six of theater's hippest playwrights were engaged to write short plays related to the current recession and its effects on young people. While some are more successful than others, the hit-or-miss evening doesn't cohere nearly as well as one would hope.

The evening begins with Adam Rapp's "Classic Kitchen Timer," in which a recently unemployed woman (Sarah Ellen Stephens) has 12 minutes to take advantage of a "unique financial opportunity" which promises 25,000 dollars if she knifes a baby to death. Rapp employs a vaguely sinister narrator (Nick Maccarone) to draw out her story, perhaps in pursuit of quickly making the woman's dilemma[...]