Put aside the Edinburgh fringe and the London pub theatre circuit, and where do you find the next generation of theatre-makers?
Not in the established houses, which have grown too cautious about money and too slick to risk the shock of the new. But venture too far off the beaten track and you can say goodbye to quality control.
All praise, then, to the Arches, for creating a platform for the kind of work that fizzes with a quirky energy that more polished professionals lack. The cavernous venue's second annual Festival of Theatre runs for two weeks and showcases half a dozen enterprising companies from across the UK.
This week it gives us two sparky productions that, though hardly mould-breaking in themselves, demonstrate a healthy playfulness towards dramatic form and a lively curiosity about theatrical expression.
Fiona Cole is one of two winners of the 2003 Arches award for stage directors. Her Beautiful Anger is less a play than a theme, raw and exposed. Devised by the company, it is a riff on the idea of anger, inspired by the body language of intense emotions.
The irony is that the more angry the three actors get, the more funny the show becomes. It is not so much theatre of cruelty as theatre of mild irritation (plus gags).
Using a mixture of first person narrative, textbook lecture and the world's most annoying song, they explore the explosions and implosions that anger inspires.
The show's insights are absorbing, if not profound, although there are long sequences when too little happens, broken up only by a few entertaining bouts of vigorous exchange.
The sense of anger spills over into Nothing to Fear Any More, a two-hander devised by Julie Brown and Johnny McKnight. It traces a romantic relationship from coy courtship through cloying cosiness and finally to bitter fallout.
Its vision is fatalistic, but the depressing implications are offset by slick and funny dialogue that is delivered with comic panache.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 0901-022 0300.
