By Brian Beacom

IN WHAT other world could you hope to set eyes on Dusty Springfield, Jocky Wilson and the man who shot President Lincoln?

Where can you show up in Glasgow on an afternoon and be treated to tales of teen angst, dominatrices, or watch a long-term marriage come apart at the seams?

Yes, Oran Mor’s lunchtime series A Play, A Pie and a Pint is back. And the season ahead is designed to soothe and enrich the winter soul.

First up on February 6 is Dusty Won’t Play. Writer Annie Caulfield takes us back to 1964 when Dusty is at the peak of her powers and on a tour of South Africa.

But when the singer realises the power of apartheid she refuses to play to segregated audiences.

Frances Thorburn stars as Dusty and the play will feature half a dozen Dusty songs.

The following week brings Dirt Under The Carpet to the Oran Mor stage, written by James Plays creator Rona Munro. It tells of Muriel and Lorraine, two office cleaners, played by Joyce Falconer and Karen Fishwick, and the play opens with their boss discovered dead, which is never a bad thing. In dramaturgical terms of course.

Then Oran Mor goes gaelic, with An Tango Mu Dheireadh Am Partaig, or Last Tango in Partick for the non-bilingual of which most of us are.

Alison Lang’s play will be performed almost entirely in Gaelic, with English surtitles for non Gaelic -speaking audiences and asks what happens to a married couple who become empty nesters.

We discover Moira decides it’s time to dust off the old dancing shoes and go strictly ballroom magic. But when she attracts the attentions of a younger man is she prepared to go all Madonna?

The end of February heralds the arrival of World Domination by Lesley Hart, a tale of two broke sisters who become dominatricies to make ends meet.

In March, the evacuation of Dunkirk provides the backdrop for Stuart Hepburn’s love story, The Beaches of St Valery.

It’s the story of the men of 51st Highland Division who were sacrificed in a secret political deal when Churchill ordered them to stay and fight to the last bullet.

Nine thousand Scotsmen surrendered at St-Valery-en-Caux, and were marched to POW camps in Poland.

All of them were betrayed. Some of them escaped. But one of them fell in love.

The following week brings a comedy in the form of Gavin Smith’s Gap Years. The play follows the life of Geraldine, who sees the precious time between retirement and self-reclining chairs as her gap years, and nothing can hold her back. Except her daughter.

From the end of dreams to darts, Jocky Wilson Said is set in 1979 when the Scots arrow chucker finds himself in the Nevada desert, and alone.

Jane Livingstone and Jonathan Cairney’s play focuses on the Fifer’s truly great challenge – to get home.

There is always room for a farce in an Oran Mor season and this year Hilary Lyon’s Ding Dong, fits the bell.

It tells of two well-heeled Edinburgh lady who adopts two black children. And near farcical events trigger “a darkly comic domestic crisis of epic proportions.”

April’s play is Channeling Jabez, by Giles Croft and tells the story of Jabez Wolffe, A Glaswegian Jew who in the early 20th century attempted to swim the Channel twenty one times. And almost made it.

How do you reproduce a Channel swim in a basement theatre? With talent and imagination.

From the Channel we move to America again, this time arriving in 1865. Peter Arnott’s His Final Bow takes us to 12 days after the death of President Lincoln where John Wilkes Booth is hiding in a barn with a broken leg, fully expecting to be acclaimed a hero.

Then we leap forward in time, into the world of the clairvoyant, or rather someone pretending she can speak to the dead with David Cosgrove’s Voices In Her Ear.

Betty, we learn, has been “talking” to dead people for thirty years and she’s weary, heart sore, and filthy rich. So, she’s packing up, taking down the website and retiring to somewhere warm.

But her assistant Siobhan and the thirty other people employed in this multi-million pound scam business aren’t happy.

Tonight however Betty is set to have one final private session with a punter desperate for answers.

The next play takes a scalpel to notion of idealism and genuine honesty. Clara Glynn’s Safe Place features a leftie, PC female writer who writes about homelessness. But then on night a young homeless woman turns up at her door. And we discover all bets are off.

We’re back into comedy land on May 1 with Confessional by David Weir which has “a Gregory’s Girl feel about it”. It tells of a teenage Catholic boy who is pressured into joining the priesthood. But he is only interested in teenage girls.

The next play in the series is Beg, Borrow Steal. New writer Anita Alexander Rae is the recipient of the David MacLennan Award and her story tells of habitual shoplifter Cher who is caught by department store manager Tess.

Cher repeats her theft again and again but a fragile bond develops between the two women.

From a first-time playwright, Oran Mor follows on with a new play by Peter McDougall, one of Scotland’s most experienced writers, who’s re-working of Whisky Galore is set for cinema release. In this new play But That Was Then, the writer has turned his laptop in the direction of marital disharmony.

Marcia is convinced she is ageing quicker than her husband James; and it can’t simply be put down to a changing world that leaves her unsure, unemployable, bemused and feeling stranded.

But James seems not to notice.

The final Oran Mor production of the season begins on May 22. Small World, by veteran TV comedy producer Sean Hardie, tells of exiled King Maximilian Xth of Octavia who shares an attic flat off the Dunbarton Road with his son and heir the Crown Prince Pauli.

The King has been there fifty years but still dreams of going home. Pauli however just wants to be rich and successful and meet girls.

Be careful what you wish for.

“We hope we’ve got a really great mix of plays,” says producer Morag Fullerton.

“The challenge is to produce something for everybody.”