We don't often see local theater groups combine two one-act plays into a single evening, largely because of the difficulty in finding the right pairing that makes sense and offers continuity.

But the current double bill of David Mamet's "Reunion" and Harold Pinter's "A Kind of Alaska" does make sense. Both plays deal heavily in themes of absence, alienation, and the anguish in attempting reconciliation. And both adapt to a single spare stage set and could easily be double cast.

Their pairing precedent was set in 2006 when the Sydney Theatre Company produced both shows, with "Alaska" staged by actress Cate Blanchett in her directorial debut and "Reunion" directed by her husband, Andrew Upton. The Hawai'i production is directed by David Farmer for The Actors' Group and features an excellent and intelligent interpretation of the two works.

But while the production is technically first-rate, it remains unsatisfying in that neither play reaches an effective conclusion. Mamet ("Glengarry Glen Ross," "Speed-the-Plow") and Pinter ("The Birthday Party," "The Homecoming") established reputations with more substantive dramas. But in this combination, it is as if each playwright responded to an exercise in creating dialogue and characters, but stopped short of taking them somewhere.

Mamet's "Reunion" is between an absent, alcoholic father (played by Peter Clark with an effective blue-collar accent) and his adult daughter who is looking for more than a father figure (delivered with emotional distance and flashes of irritability by Laura Bach Buzzell.)

As the characters exchange personal monologues in a series of short scenes and blackouts, and fumble to personally connect, it is obvious that there isn't a quick fix to their separate loneliness. "What we have is going nowhere and the rest of it doesn't exist!" exclaims the father. "I don't want a friend," demands the daughter, "I have a right to a father."

The emotional gulf in "A Kind of Alaska" is created by a "sleeping sickness" that struck Deborah (Hoku Gilbert) at age 16 and arrested her for the next 29 years, until injected with a new drug. Attending her awakening are a doctor (John Wythe White) and a sister (Buzzell in a second appearance).

With an improbable healthy colour and an equally improbable ability to walk, Deborah spouts a series of freely associated comments — some from her lost childhood, but others from that place where she has spent her last, nearly three decades. As Gilbert effectively builds a troubled and otherworldly persona, the other characters retreat into defensive postures, "You have been nowhere, absent, indifferent. It is we who have suffered."

As each play terminates, it suggests that its characters may be going somewhere. The father and daughter might connect, and Deborah might lapse once again into that cold and distant place. But having created these characters, the playwrights leave them — and us — to work out what happens next.

The evening offers rich and meaty roles that actors love and that the TAG ensemble delivers well. It also offers insights into the playwrights through a couple of their lesser works.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai''i since 1973.