ICELANDIC comedians who laugh their way into office, firebrand trade unionist Jimmy Reid - and the tragic tale of delusional actress Norma Desmond.

These are just some of the characters featured in the new season of Oran Mor plays.

As always, the lunchtime Play, Pie and a Pint series offers a range of one hour plays to suit just about every theatre taste.

"We hope this season will provide a real mix of comedy and drama," says producer Susannah Armitage. "This looks to be a really entertaining season."

The season begins with black comedy Butterfly, by first-time playwright Anne Hogg, a story set in the backdrop of the Caterpillar factory in Uddingston.

It's March 1987 and Jamie Cassidy is facing redundancy. And in an attempt to get away from everything to consider his future Jamie climbs the factory's water tower.

However, he soon discovers he's not alone - or the only one with problems.

From Uddingston the next play moves to Iceland with Sandy Nelson's Hooray for All Kinds of Things. The biographical play tells the true story of Jon Gnarr who a stand-up comic for twenty years but in the light of the financial crisis in 2010 he ran for mayor of Reykjavík. As a joke.

And of course, he won.

The 350th play in the PPP series is We Can All Agree to Pretend This Never Happened by Emma Goidel, a Philadelphian writer.

Since Philadelphia now hosts its own version of the Oran Mor success story, and stages Oran Mor-created plays, it makes perfect sense Glasgow should reciprocate.

This comedy tells of two gungho researchers who decide to fake results in their Siberian lab, and a series of misunderstandings take over the lives of the whole research team.

On a more serious note, Netting by Morna Young looks at the impact of a fishing disaster in the North of Scotland and how three women adapt to their lives as widows. Kitty can't stop knitting. Alison needs looking after. Sylvia wants to forget.

And then writer Paddy Cunneen takes us to Japan with Wind, Bird, Floor, Moon, where he embarks on a 'foolhardy journey to Kyoto to study Japanese Noh theatre.'

"During his numerous adventures, misadventures, and cultural faux pas, he meets a woman who experienced the Tsunami disaster of 2011," says Susannah.

"And through this contact with contemporary Japan he learns something essential to the ancient art of Noh."

Oran Mor loves to present challenging plays and writer Rob Drummond certainly ticks that box. The creator of Wrestling and Bullet Catch has now come up with Lifesaving, the story of sister and brother Sandra and Jamie who have run away from home.

As if their lives weren't complicated enough, Jamie has 'done something bad,' but can't really communicate because he is almost mute.

Welsh writer Matthew Trevanion's Leviathan brings a lighter note to the basement theatre with this tale of familial ties, casting a darkly humorous eye over the changing fortunes of people trying to unmoor themselves from their past.

However Martin McCormick The Day the Pope Emptied Croy draws the laughs in much thicker. The actor-turned-writer tells the early eighties story of Ranald the only 'Prod' in Croy who finds himself all alone because everyone has gone to see the Pope. Except Barr.

Although, he doesn't know where he is, or what he is because of all the glue he's inhaled.

From Croy, Oran Mor's Russian compliment this season kicks off with Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha by Natalia Vorozhbyt.

Set in a modest home on the outskirts of Kiev, Katya and Oksana are busy preparing a funeral meal for their beloved Sasha, a husband, a stepfather, and Army colonel. Well, he was all these things until he dropped stone cold dead on the bathroom floor.

But we learn Sasha isn't going without a fight.

There's also some great drama in the comedy that is Fat Alice, by Alison Carr. We discover Moira and Peter have been having an affair for a decade. He'd promised to finally tell his wife today, but something's got to give. And it does, when a crack in Moira's ceiling gives way to something they could never have expected.

Also on the new season list are Broth, by Tim Primrose, the classic tale, but Whisky Galore which is performed in Gaelic and subtitled for non Gaelic -speaking audiences.

And No Nothing by Alan Spence, which imagines an afterlife-anteroom in which two iconic Glasgow figures - poet Edwin Morgan and trade union leader Jimmy Reid who died within days of each other in 2010.- meet up.

If that sounds fascinating what about Vlad the Impaler in which Richard Crane uses the Dracula legend to offer 'disturbing insight into the roots of the divisions between East and West.

In May, The War Hasn't Started Yet by Mikhail Durnenkov

features a collection of moments which offer a darkly funny, kaleidoscopic look at contemporary Russia on the brink.

It's followed by Tommy's Song by Lou Prendergast then The Head in the Jar by Deb Jones. Set in 1973, Caitlin Thomas, the Irish dancer, battles her double addiction to alcohol and to her obsessive love with Dylan Thomas, the welsh poet.

Another Russian play Thoughts Spoken Aloud From Above by Yuri Klavdiev follows then in June Juliet Cadzow stars in Sunset Boulevard: The Lunchtime Cut by Morag Fullarton, the classic story of how self-delusion can keep hope alive but destroy the soul.