Theatre review: For the Love of Chekhov

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.

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

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