Readers of these pages will be familiar with the artistic roll call of honour that has helped make A Play, A Pie and A Pint, so popular.
It's fitting then, that to celebrate its landmark 300th production this week's PPP should feature a "new" play from the Makar, Liz Lochhead, first broadcast as part of the Stanley Baxter Playhouse, and now brought to the stage under director Marilyn Imrie.
The piece is a bittersweet comedy dealing with themes of ageing, love and, loss, set on Burns Night in a sheltered housing complex. Here, two chalk-and-cheese elderly residents, recently widowed, staunch socialist, John (Dave Anderson), and borderline dementia case, Nettie (Ann Scott Jones), are brought into each other's orbit, with Robert Pettigrew's silent, piano playing, resident offering his own musical narrative accompaniment.
When John and Nettie argue over Burns – for John the Bard was a man of the people and libertine, for Nettie a skirt-chasing romantic – they come across as equals. But the hot-water bottle in Nettie's fridge suggest a far more fragile soul, caught in a hinterland of confusion.
John is clearly devoted to the memory of his dead wife, but as the play progresses to its Ae Fond Kiss finale, you get the sense that forming another strong emotional attachment might not be beyond him.
Ann Scott Jones is a joy as Nettie, bringing a real touching warmth to the part. And while Lochhead's writing here may not have the poetic force of some of her other work, her merry muse manages to touch base with Burn's main preoccupations, from religion to love, with both wit and humanity.
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