Theatre review: For the Love of Chekhov

Matt Costello is Mitch and Pauline Knowles is Francis, meeting for the first time

MITCH is a guy of 50 or so with a bad marriage behind him; Francis is a 43-year-old office lady desperate for a last chance at motherhood. In their internet dating profiles, though, they have been more than a little economical with the truth, Mitch inventing a whole world of academic and musical achievement that only ever existed as a possibility, Francis claiming to be a blonde '“ which she isn't '“ in her late 30s; so that when they meet in a Glasgow bar, the scene is set for instant mutual disappointment, enlivened on Francis's part by some pretty breathtaking rudeness.

Oran Mor, Glasgow ***

That’s the scenario for AS Robertson’s super-short Play, Pie And Pint show For The Love Of Chekhov, which offers us a brief 35-minutes of repartee between this unpromising pair.

The more we learn about the characters, the less we can believe that life-scarred but pleasant Mitch would want to have anything to do with a woman who turns out to be a complete flake, and a pretentious, lying ignoramus into the bargain.

Matt Costello and Pauline Knowles turn in a pair of decent, witty performances, though, in a fragment full of entertaining one-liners that looks more like the first scene of something on a larger scale than a play in its own right.

JOYCE MCMILLAN

Final performance today