Theatre review: Ink: 24 Hour playes

IF THE current Mayfesto event at the Tron is intended to revive the spirit of Glasgow's Mayfest, no-one seems to have told the young writers involved in Friday's night's scratch event, in which a team of six writers, two directors and ten actors spent a sleepless 24 hours writing and rehearsing a one-hour series of miniature plays.

It's not that you can't sense the presence in their work of a series of 21st century social concerns; but the lack of any sense of urgency is striking, and almost frightening.

So what we get, in order of appearance, is Clare Duffy's Panopticon, a short whimsical essay on the lack of freedom as experienced by two performing chimps in the old Glasgow Panopticon next door. Then there's K Marshall's Choose Your Own Adventure, which lacks the time to explore what could be an interesting and resonant argument about how books that let you choose your own ending really offer no choice at all. There's Stef Smith's There Is No I In Board Game, perhaps the finest of the six, a fiercely well-written cameo about three women prisoners whiling away the time by playing Scrabble.