Medicine men

Mr Placebo Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until MARCH 1 hhh Dial M for Murder Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until March 1 hh Mum's the Word King's Theatre, Glasgow until February 22, touring scotland until april 19 hhh Stones in his Pockets King's Theatre, Edinburgh run ended; King's Theatre, Glasgow February 18-22; His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, February 4-March 1 hhhh The Winter's Tale His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen run ended hhhh A new work by a highly regarded talent always attracts burdensome levels of expectation, so although Isabel Wright's Mr Placebo is disappointing, that's not a damning judgement. It's just not as good as I'd hoped.

The action is set in a hospital ward, where four young men are enlisted as guinea pigs in a five-day drug trial. Each brings his own model of masculinity and leaves behind his own problems - though for one the main problem is within the hospital, where his father is a cancer patient. It's a promising premise - a macrocosm of those all- male pockets of society. The male nurse becomes a focus for their compliance or defiance and, boys being boys, violence is never far below the surface. It's also an exploration of our culture's misplaced faith in pharmacology.

Wilson Milam's production is witty and rich in detail, and all six actors give creditable performances, especially Stuart Bowman as the rebellious hardman and John Stahl as the ailing father. But given the hothouse setting, pace and tension are allowed to drop too often and far too many lines function as crude exposition of character or plot.

In the pivotal role of the son, Benjamin Davies is dealt more than his fair share of these, which is a pity, because at other times his earnest music hack is the play's most intriguing and likeable character. Wright's central point is that - in life as in medicine - there are no easy cures. But a little surgical excision would improve the health of her script.

Alfred Hitchcock's 3-D film may still exert a quirky, old-school charm, but on a modern stage Dial M For Murder feels clunky and dated. Kenny Miller's production is presented with the Citizens' customary panache on a handsome set of his own design. But the modern costumes don't help - especially when references to "used (pounds) 1 notes" are retained despite the London setting. The actors do their best, but the prime suspect is the play itself.

"The comedy for anyone who ever had a mother" is how the publicity describes Mum's The Word. Actually, its core constituency is any woman who ever had a baby; though dads in the audience seem to get it too. Even those of us without progeny can learn from this collection of monologues and sketches on the theme of parenthood. I found out plenty about the tribulations involved, and it made me wonder why Durex aren't sponsoring the show.

Written and originally staged by six Canadian mother/performers, it made its Scottish debut last year and will soon arrive in London's West End. In this incarnation, the "star" is Barbara Rafferty, but it's Annie Grace who gets the lioness's share of the best bits: she's particularly memorable as an exhausted young mother locked into a permanent, jiggling rockabye. But in Wayne Harrison's laid-back, uncluttered production, all six of the ensemble (themselves mothers) get a fair crack of the whip and they seize it with gusto, nimbly darkening the tone for the show's occasional venture into more sombre territory.

But as the script points out, people who talk incessantly about their offspring are easily mistaken for deranged monomaniacs; and the wry humour is mostly geared to an audience who will recognise the agonies - and rare but transcendant ecstasies - of child-rearing. I don't doubt its authenticity, but unless you're a parent many of the jokes will seem a bit, well, laboured.

The first half of Marie Jones's Stones In His Pockets is completely bewildering, writes Tim Abrahams. This play has just celebrated its third year in the West End and it seems little more than a series of well-observed character sketches that amuse without purpose. How did it win an Olivier award?

The setting is interesting - the making of a Hollywood movie in County Kerry - but Jones seems content to make the odd wry observation and keep the world of her play small. In fact you feel she's playing on the caustic-wit-in-the-boozer stereotype as much as the Hollywood machine plays on the dancing peasant with "foir in his oyes". About a minute before the interval, however, the play makes a volte-face and reveals itself to be a work of no small brilliance.

For the death around which it turns gives it not only a bit of dramatic impetus but also the structure on which to hang its purpose. It's soon clear that Jones - unlike most of her fellow actors - knows what her professional world looks like from the outside and she has used that knowledge well. Far from messing us about she has slowly been preparing us for a subtle examination of how art, money and power interact in our society.

But the truly life-affirming thing about this play - performed with subtlety and guts by Malcolm Adams and Hugh Lee - is that it practises what it preaches. It proves that drama can be highly accessible and still have something to say. It also shows that it's possible to write a little play about big things. Someone really ought to make a film of it, just to give Jones's slightly sentimental conclusion the self-fulfilling prophesy it so richly deserves.

The Winter's Tale is a nasty play. It's usually lumped in with Shakespeare's comedies but there's not much to laugh at, writes Hazel Hutchison.

Jealously, deception, domestic violence, attempted murder, and injustice - I don't need to point out how contemporary that is. The modern-day setting of Dundee Rep's acclaimed production certainly brings home the brutality of the text and the danger of a powerful man, such as Leontes driven by passion rather than reason. Gregory Smith's monochrome stage design highlights the black-and-white choices in the play, but also visualises the bleakness of a world in which children are abandoned, a wife unfairly accused and friendship discarded. Despite excellent comic turns by Autolycus (Keith Fleming) and the Shepherd (John Buick) the play disturbs. Even the final reconciliation leaves one cold, and this is underscored powerfully with Leontes and Hermione locked in a final frosty stare as the ghost of their son looks on. Strong stuff.

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