Coffee-Table Notes

Citizens Theatre , Glasgow Four stars The light is barely there at the opening of Sam Holcroft's twenty-first century adaptation of Anton Chekhov's slow-burning tip-toe through the seemingly wasted lives of several generations of country folk. As bookish Sonya's diligence at the accounts is disturbed by her uncle Vanya's barely contained frustration at the sheer mundanity of what his life has become, things are exacerbated even more as his city slicker brother in law and Sonya's father is doted on by his glamorous new wife Yelena, who Vanya is besotted with. Only dashing doctor Astrov seems to have any kind of vision for the future, even as he's worshipped by Sonya. Up until he meets Yelena, Astrov's notions of biology are all in the abstract, as he talks at length of insects, pheromones and living wild and free in tribes. Everything else, it seems, is just the end of the line for a bunch of part-time would-be suicides. Stripped to the bones of

King's Theatre , Edinburgh Four stars Freedom and democracy aren't words usually associated with the late Margaret Thatcher, the former UK Prime Minister whose ideology-driven decade in office set the tone of things to come. Those are the exact words, however, which open Moira Buffini's play, which puts Thatcher on stage alongside the Queen as a cut-glass double act showing off the edited highlights of Thatcher's time in office between 1979 and 1990. This makes for quite a history lesson as Buffini imagines a series of meetings between the pair, simply known here as Q and T. As older versions of the two women watch over these formal and frosty exchanges between their younger selves, a world of IRA bombings, royal weddings and the Falklands War is laid bare as Q becomes a quietly radical conscience of the nation. All of this is delivered in Indhu Rubasingham's production, originally seen at the Tricycle Theatre in London prior to this commercial tour, in a

It's probably not every day a Glasgow cabbie starts talking to his passenger about what a great playwright Samuel Beckett is. That's exactly what happened to Dominic Hill, artistic director of the Gorbals-based Citizens Theatre, however, when he jumped a fast black one day en route to work. The theatre's forthcoming production of Beckett's 1957 play, Endgame, had just been announced in partnership with Manchester's recently opened Home venue, and the cabbie knew all about it. This had little to do with the fact that Hill's production will feature David Neilson and Chris Gascoyne, both familiar faces from iconic TV soap, Coronation Street, as the blind Hamm and his servant, Clov. Rather, the driver was a fan of the play itself, and was keen to tell the bloke on the back seat all about it lest he miss the show. Hill eventually 'fessed up who he was, but not before he and the cabbie had agreed on one thing. “It's my favourite Beckett play,” Hill s

Eastgate Theatre and Arts Centre Four stars Five women sit on chairs in a row at the start of Sylvia Dow's new meditation on the role knitting has played on Borders life, their faces lit up by the patterns formed from the projections of nineteenth century mill-workers them. When they sing of lifetimes spent in those mills, it is in a harmonious unison gloriously at odds with the disparate yarns that unravel over the next hour in word, song and image. Developed over the last three years as part of an oral history project dubbed Knit Two Together and presented by the ever fertile Stellar Quines Theatre Company as part of the Luminate festival of creative ageing, Dow's script flits from latter-day knitting circles to poverty-stricken women imprisoned for stealing thread to illustrate a hidden history excavated and presented in this most playfully inventive show and tell. Muriel Romanes' production transforms all this into a criss-crossing cut-up collage which, with its mix of

Traverse Theatre , Edinburgh Three stars Bob has lost something. For this gentleman of a certain age, it might just be his whatsitsname, or it could well be his thingummy. Either way, and even if he can't remember his own name, he's going to make the great escape from the old peoples' home that houses him and get back to where he came from come what may. Before all that, however, Linda McLean's new play for Lung Ha's theatre company has each member of the five-strong cast introduce themselves to the audience both out of character and in. Our guide is Karen Sutherland as Bob's niece in Australia, Lesley, who gives us an insight into Bob's life in a way that he's not capable of these days. As Bob makes a break for it to a soundtrack of old Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard numbers, his topsy-turvy world also includes a surreal line-up of invisible dogs, would-be superheroes and talking CCTV cameras. With a spate of plays looking at the effects

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars Punk rock probably wasn't uppermost in Sarah Waters' mind when she wrote her iconic 1998 novel about one young woman's getting of wisdom as she burls through nineteenth century lesbian London. When a a train ride to the big city becomes a cut-up sound art chorale, however, it is clearly at the heart of Lyndsey Turner's audacious production of Laura Wade's equally wild adaptation. As provincial girl Nancy falls for gender-bending music hall diva Kitty, life becomes one big cabaret, though not before the show begins with a cheeky wink to Lyceum shows past care of David Cardy's Good Old Days style Chairman. He dictates the action with his gavel, thumping things along when they get a tad dull. With a Palm Court style band accompanying the action, it is this embracing of theatricality that makes what follows so exquisite. So while Nancy's home-life is expressed through a series of flattened-out sketches, her a

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars It's fitting that Paul Higgins and Ricky Ross' new musical play is set in the shabby, wood-panelled walls of a Wishaw community hall. For among the chairs that sit as mismatched as the people who form the choir founded by Iraqi doctor, Khalid, there are few contemporary plays that nail their colours to a grassroots mast quite as much as this. As single mums, ex cons and zero hours contract workers are thrown together with Tory councillors and other posh locals, each with a theme tune they share with the group, a cross-class, cross-gender, pan-generational supergroup finds unexpected harmony through singing together. There is romance, between Ryan Fletcher's twenty-something Donny and Nesha Caplan's unemployed Velia, sexual tension between Jess Murphy's suburban wife Charlotte and Peter Polycarpou's Khalid, and a melting pot of life between. In the end, however, it is tracksuit-clad Scott's political rap that di