Author, poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish won the Pulitzer Prize three times. It’s evident why when you see Core Performance Manufactory’s production of two MacLeish one-act plays, running through January 27 at the Bath House Cultural Center on White Rock Lake.

Expressionist in style, delicate and lyrical, they offer satisfying, warm respite from a chilly mid-winter evening.

Ephemeral delight for the senses and the intellect

"Air Raid," the first and shorter of the two one-acts, creates so much dramatic tension in a short space of time, it leaves one breathless.

Almost a tone poem with multiple voices, it portrays the villagers’ actions in the Basque town of Guernica immediately before the savage bombing that Picasso immortalized in his world-renowned painting of that name.

It’s potent. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s powerful theater.

Core Performance’s ensemble respects the voice of the playwright implicitly. Shannon Kearns-Simmons’ choreographed movement, stylized in concept, balances the spare poetic language and provides a tragic counterpoint to the cut and dried urgency of the impending disaster. Taut, heart-wrenching images of moments and faces linger long after intermission.