In ''The House of Bernarda Alba'', a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters whose desires are tragically and violently frustrated: a woman's longing for a child in ''Yerma'', and a bride's yearning for her lover in ''Blood Wedding''. All appeal for freedom and sexual and social equality, and are also passionate defences of the imagination: in Christopher Maurer's words, 'poetic drama unsurpassed by any writer of our time'.