Brian Beacom

CONSIDER the incredible 1908 story of a Glasgow man who is wrongly convicted of murder thanks to falsified police evidence?

Leap along ten years and we’re offered up the incredible tale of the little boy who sits alongside a blind piano player in a small Scottish cinema in 1918?, describing the on-screen action.

And then how about we fast forwarded to 1956, to Paris where Fred Astaire, and Jean-Paul Sartre, the world’s most influential philosopher and Audrey Hepburn, meet up?

Still sliding along the time frame, just three more years, and we learn identical sisters Sandy and Rose are runaway winners of Butlin’s talent competition 1959.

But 20 years later they find themselves working cruise ships on the Med.

And their plans to return home to see their mum take an unexpected twist.

These stories, and nine more, are all featured in the upcoming season of Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint.

“There is a really great range of work,” says producer Morag Fullerton.

“The plays again cover a wide range of subjects, but we hope they will all be really entertaining.”

The season begins on August 27 with Losing The Rag, Alan Muir’s story about a local newspaper facing the onslaught of the digital age.

It’s followed by Outside In, Chris Grady’s tale of Jay, who hasn’t left his flat in years, but when a gun is posted through his letterbox and two unwelcome visitors come knocking, he knows the outside world has arrived.

The dark comedy bleeds into the light a week later with musical comedy revue show, Tap Dancing With Jean-Paul Sartre.

James Runcie imagines what will happen if Astaire and the existentialist philosopher meet up with Audrey Hepburn.

Donna Franceschild’s The Lottery Ticket has its share of existentialist angst when we come to learn of Salih and Jacek’s run of bad luck.

Salih’s asylum claim has been turned down, Jacek hasn’t been able to send money to his wife in Krakow for two months, and they’ve just been ejected from their hostel for “rowdy behaviour”.

But when a lottery ticket blows into Jacek’s coat as he sleeps, does this mean their lives are to change for ever?

The following week sees Alan Bisset look hard at the changing notions of racism in It Wisnae Me, a political satire set in a police interview room.

We discover Jock has been huckled for a crime he says he didn’t commit: imperialism. Is Jock a racist?

The following week, October 8,reveals The Last Picture Show Morag Fullerton’s flit back and forth between World War 1 and a small picture house in the south of Scotland.

From there we leap to modern times and a very modern tale of how society views sex offenders.

David Gerow’s A Change In Management is set in a Glasgow warehouse where the managers have had a tip off one of their employees may be a sex offender.

This dark comedy explores the notion of how we react to such information.

Then it’s the time for absurdist theatre to stake it’s claim, with Louise Welsh’s King Keich, the story of the game show host who rises to power, leaving behind him a trail of “chaos, mayhem and mass murder.”

The play is “inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, with an added dose of Punch and Judy.”

Oran Mor never shirks from the opportunity to explore the absurd behaviour of politicians however and Donald Mcleary’s The Biscuit is set in a safe room during a security alert.

“Spiky” intellectual Prime Minister Ellis Gregory and his wife Sam are trapped alongside cleaner Colin and his trusty vacuum.

But when a number of explosions rock the outside of the shelter, we come to understand who is the true leader.

More politics follows with We Interrupt This Programme, by the DM Collective. This “comedy/musical/polemical spectacular” looks at how we question about the news we are being fed.

Next up is Oscar Slater – The Trial That Shamed A City, which tells of the immigrant who was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of an 83-year-old Glasgow woman.

The tone lightens the following week comedy writer Lynn Ferguson’s Turns of the Tide.

It’s the story of the tartan sisters The Heather Belles, who move from Butlins to the cruise shops yet dream of a return home. But what happens when their chance arrives.

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A Play Pie and a Pint, from August 27.