You never know what you’re going to get with a Caryl Churchill play, but it’s sure to be something unique, thought-provoking, and convention-breaking. After exploring gender and racial barriers in Cloud 9, the clash of capitalism and feminism in Top Girls, financial turmoil in Serious Money, magic and demons in The Skirker, cloning in A Number, and numerous other topics in bizarre and weird ways, she tackles the power of legends, myths, and metaphor in a quartet of odd but affecting one-acts, Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. at the Public Theater.

The first three playlets are short and explosive, detonating like miniature bombs. Director James MacDonald has separated them with entertaining circus acts, performed with winning charm by balancing whiz Junru Wang and expert juggler Maddox Morfit-Tighe. These fun interludes act as palate cleansers between Churchill’s short unusual dramatic courses. Glass concerns a girl made of glass (played with appropriate delicacy and yearning by Ayana Workman). She is easily breakable and transparent, not just physically but emotionally. MacDonald stages the play on a narrow ledge, emphasizing the precarious space the girl occupies. There is no special costume or effect to convey her crystalline condition, MacDonald and Churchill ask us to use our imagination as she converses with the family clock, a ceramic dog and a vase on the need to remain still on a shelf. She falls for an equally vulnerable boy (tender Japhet Balaban), who is victimized by an abusive father. The climax of this bitter fairy tale is shattering, literally and figuratively.

The powerful Deirdre O’Connell represents “Gods” in the following piece Kill, a Beckett-like monologue. Costume designer Enver Chakartash has clad her in a silvery suit with the suggestion of wings and she is seated on a suspended cloud. After stating that the gods do not exist, she launches on an epic retelling of the numerous tragedies surrounding the House of Atreus. Phrases detailing the murders within Agamemnon’s family and the endless slaughters that followed are repeated emphasizing the senselessness of death in the name of the deities. (The repetitions and circular nature of the speech reminded me of Lucky’s monologue in Waiting for Godot.) O’Connell’s character is a symbol for the made-up supreme beings of mythologies used to explain humanity’s inhumanity. O’Connell delivers this tirade with a leavening of humor and growing passion which finally erupts in an explosion of anger at the useless killing.

What If If Only is the most esoteric and symbolic of the first three one-acts and has the least impact. A lonely widower (sensitive Saytha Sridharan) called simply Someone is mourning the loss of his young wife. Her ghost (Workman again) suddenly appears, but there is a catch. She brings with her phantoms representing all the unrealized futures that might have occurred had she lived. MacDonald cleverly solves this unusual stage problem. He has the walls of set designer Miriam Buether’s white cube of a living space lift up and the rest of the cast floods in overwhelming Someone. The ghosts including the wife flee, living only the Present (jovial John Ellison Conlee) and a child representing the unknown future (a self-assured Ruby Blaut at the performance attended.) Her only line, repeated a few times, is “I’m going to happen.” Despite MacDonald’s admirable staging, Churchill’s concept is too abstract to move us. The characters are all too generic for us to care about them. We can accept the concept of a girl made of glass because of the specific, detailed life Churchill has given her, but the individuals of What If If Only are insubstantial shadows.

After intermission, we get the main course, the hour-long Imp, a complex and fascinating study of wish fulfillment. We are in a seedy living room which seems to float in space (kudos to set designer Miriam Buether). Retired cousins Jimmy and Dot (Conlee and O’Connell) share the house and are entertaining their younger relative Niamh (Adelind Horan) who has moved to London from Ireland. The older cousins don’t have much going on in their lives. Jimmy has taken up jogging to relieve his depression while Dot suffers from debilitating back problems and was dismissed from her nursing job for abusing a patient. They pin their emotional needs on Niamh (pronounced Neve) who expresses irrational fear of becoming a Muslim or throwing herself under a train.

All three become attached to Rob (Japhet Balaban), an unemployed, homeless young man, separated from his partner and their school-age son. A supernatural element is introduced when Jimmy reveals Dot has been keeping a bottle which she believes contains a magical, invisible imp.… and perhaps Jimmy believes in it, too. The influence of the imaginary (?) demon on the relationships among these four form the meat of this fourth piece. Dot treats the unseen creature like the imaginary son in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She acknowledges the madness of her belief in its reality, but needs it as a means of giving color to her drab existence. Rob and Niamh are beset with fears and uncertainty while Jimmy relays sob stories from acquittances to make himself feel better by comparison. Interestingly, all of Jimmy’s stories resemble classical tragedies from the Greeks or Shakespeare, reinforcing Kill’s theme of myths, legends and literature explaining our meaningless lives.

The cast here deliver exemplary performances of quietly desperate people yearning for purpose, but O’Connell goes a step beyond, endowing each line and gesture with the subtext of a lifetime’s disappointment. When it seems the imp has been taken from Dot, her rage threatens to destroy the theater. Hers is a devastating performance in a glass-and-convention shattering evening.

A few blocks away from the Public, Classic Stage Company is presenting a rare work by a playwright who has been as neglected as Churchill has been celebrated. Up until recently, the vibrant, thoughtful works of Alice Childress have languished. Trouble in Mind (1955) was slated for Broadway after an Off-Broadway run. But the playwright refused to make changes to its radical-for-its-time message about African-American identity in the commercial theater, and the play did not make it to the Main Stem until Roundabout Theater Company’s acclaimed 2021 revival. Now, another rarely-seen Childress work, Wine in the Wilderness is receiving a long-overdue staging at CSC, directed with passion and precision by LaChanze who starred in the Trouble revival.

Originally written for television and broadcast in 1969, Wine is set during the 1964 Harlem riots and concerns a clash between an African-American artist and the no-nonsense street survivor modeling for him. Bill Jameson needs a “beat-down chick” to pose for him to contrast to his idealized vision of African femininity. He finds Tomorrow “Tommy” Marie, who has been burned out of her home and at first fits his stereotyped idea of a crass female. But after making an honest emotional and sexual connection with Bill, Tommy finds out the true nature of the painting, and her rage matches Dot’s in the Churchill play. In a bravura acting display, Olivia Washington as Tommy defends her identity against the snobbish, unrealistic stances of Bill and his “enlightened” friends writer Sonny-man and his wife Cynthia, a social worker. Grantham Coleman captures Bill’s arrogance and final acceptance of Tommy’s complexity. Milton Craig Nealy is moving as Old-Timer, scratching out his share of dignity and Brooks Mantly and Lakisha May offer strong support as Sonny and Cynthia.

Some of the dialogue and sexist attitudes are dated, but much more of Childress’ fiery play is still totally relevant to today’s racial conflicts. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set contains decades of African-American history and Dede Ayite’s costumes capture the contrasting social status and aspersions of the characters. This is a finely aged Wine, ready for uncorking and more pouring in future productions.

Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.: April 16—May 11. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 15 mins. including intermission. publictheater.org.

Wine in the Wilderness: March 24—April 19. Classic Stage Company at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, 136 E. 13th St., NYC. Running time: 85 minutes with no intermission. classicstage.org