TRON THEATRE SPRING SEASON 2013

For the past month, the Tron has been full of Celtic Connections. Later, the Comedy Festival arrives. Between these two iconic festivals, Andy Arnold has managed to programme a selection of plays that reflect the energy of the venue, building the identity that Arnold has forged since he arrived from The Arches. He's even found space for some dance theatre - Grant Smeaton collaborating with Alan Greig - something that has been missing from the Tron lately (it's more likely to be found at The Arches or Tramway). 

Arnold has always been about "the word." He loves new plays, especially those in the absurdist or existential tradition - he made his name with masterful versions of Beckett's tragi-comedies. His programming at the Tron is not, however, an exercise in defining a "new classic" tradition. He wants theatre to be populist without retreating into mere light entertainment.

First up, Running on the Cracks (6-16 Feb): adapted from the novel by Julia Donaldson, it fits with the trend for socially engaged theatre. A young runaway arrives in Glasgow and deals with the problems of homelessness and identity. Stark and serious, it is a sharp riposte to a recent Guardian article by Michael Billington, who moaned that theatre was obsessed with middle-class problems. Get out of London, Michael: Scotland can't stop presenting the working class on stage. 

Scenes Unseen (8-16 Mar) is a mash-up from New Inck Theatre which premieres previously un-staged work by 1970s master of angst and chuckles Alan Ayckbourn, Athol Fugard, former star of Alan Partridge turned neo-brutalist playwright Patrick Marber and JP Donleavy alongside the work of emergent Scottish writers, Stef Smith, Lynsey Murdoch, Julie Tsang and Andrew Stott. Perfectly balanced - the new work gets a platform with the big names, everything's a premiere, and nothing is too long. That's intelligent populism at work.

Semyon Zlotnikov's surreal farce, A Man Came to A Woman, gets local mechanical magicians Sharmanka in on the action (15-23 Mar). It's Russian, there are automatons: never let it be said that the Tron is predictable. 

Glasgow is a city where the various theatres are finding their own niches: it's healthy that the Citizens has a different identity to Tramway to The Arches to the Tron. Andy Arnold has been a pretty energetic artistic director: his own tastes are pronounced, but he has encouraged the Tron to consider itself as a hub for creative communities. The bar is all gussied up, there are sketching sessions and jazz gigs in the back, and paintings on the walls. Far from being a mere theatre, there's a whole thing going on and the programme keeps pretentious folk like me intrigued without excluding those with a taste for traditional, serious drama.