[Solitaire/Double Solitaire] has its heart in the right place (if a little too much on its sleeve). It is honest, occasionally poignant, an evening of serious purpose and fleeting humor and, in its way, uncompromising. But it is also tiresome, tedious and ultimately unsuccessful. The reasons why will not be unfamiliar to anyone who has followed Anderson's career.

[The first play,] Solitaire, is set sometime in the future. The System has taken over, and marriage and the family have been abolished. People may work only one day a week, and those men whom the System has decreed are qualified must periodically deposit a specified amount of sperm to continue the race. Whether its automated form renders it unworthy of continuation would seem to be one of Mr. Anderson's questions and, perhaps agreeing, the wife of his hero has chosen the "early self-disposal" available to all inhabitants of...