This edition contains three plays by America's greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams: Suddenly Last Summer, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, and Small Craft Warning. All three are relatively short one-act plays that each deal with the darker sides of human nature and are tinged throughout with regret and isolation.

Suddenly Last Summer, probably my favourite, deals with Catherine who seemingly is insane after the death of her cousin in Europe. The tension between Catherine and her mother and brother on the one side, and her aunt on the other, is expertly done and the climax is well developed.

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore deals with a wealthy old woman and her last few days - how she deals with her memories and those around her as she is dying. It is a modernist play, with the stage assistants taking a role in the play, but ultimately it left me feeling rather empty - the main character is unlikeable and brash, but then Williams is good at creating starkly realistic characters.

The last play, Small Craft Warnings, is set in a seedy bar on the Californian coast as a motely crew of characters each deal with their own desperate fate. This is also one I liked as the conflict between the characters was well-developed and realistic, and the characters themselves well-realised.

Overall, this is a fine collection of one-act plays by Williams and a good addition to a connoisseur of Williams' plays. It however is not the place to start for someone looking for more of Williams' well-known plays. ( )