Don Hannah’s plays demonstrate the theatre’s ability to grab the emotions of an audience and not let go for a second. The three plays collected here, Rubber Dolly, Running Far Back, and Fathers and Sons, are searing explorations of intense emotions and relationships in three very different kinds of families. Each play pushes the conventions of theatre.

Rubber Dolly, written in 1986, is about the desperate, abusive lengths Fern will go to in order to keep her drunken boyfriend. The dialogue is spare, the scenes are fragments, yet the overall effect is one of an emotional tourniquet being applied. Fern’s inarticulate family will not live happily ever after.

In his 1994 play, Running Far Back, Hannah turns to the possibility of reconciliation within a family where incest has cast a destructive shadow. Loretta and Bobby are much closer than most brothers and sisters and Bobby’s jealousy and possessiveness has deadly consequences.

Fathers and Sons, written in 1998, is about as far away as you can get from realism and the easily staged play. It requires an onstage musician to play a baroque sonata while two similarly aged actors play out the story of a father and son in four distinct movements. The disappointed father ages and dies while his son stumbles toward middle age. Along the way, they become even more aware of the reticence that entraps them. They never find the right things to say, and Hannah’s art is to show characters who know this but are unable to do anything about it.

This is unforgettable theatre that uses simple resources – brilliantly honed language, live music, and haunting stage imagery from the actors – to explore two characters trapped in a classic conflict through time.