One Million Tiny Plays About Britain

First things first: there are certainly not one million plays crammed into this 75 minute three-hander. Taken from Craig Taylor's Guardian column-turned-book of the same name, in which snippets of conversations from a cross-section of British life are laid bare in print, Ros Philips' adaptation takes some of the best from the collection and turns them into theatrical vignettes.

Starting on the beautifully old-fashioned corridors of Hill Street Theatre, the audience is led to the White Stuff boutique on George Street and then up a gorgeous wooden staircase, playfully adorned with coloured patterned tiles, to a wondrous room above the shop. We're then cosily arranged around the astro turf-covered stage, which is painted like an archery target. The sketches that come after land, for the most part, like arrows right in the centre.

They're not all perfect – one about an anti-animal testing demonstration in Manchester, for example, drags. But there's so much tenderness and hilarity in this production, which says more about British social, economic and ethnic relations in a fleeting glance than some plays do over several hours. The cast excel, deftly switching between their multiple, multi-accented roles. Pauline Turner is particularly moving as an elderly lady who tries to engage a man delivering takeaway menus in conversation. She and Taqi Nazeer (who appeared in last year's lauded Beautiful Burnout) offer one of the most emotional scenes as a father and son covertly sitting in a First Class train carriage because the standard seats are overbooked. It's a familiar situation for most people in Britain but told with the kind of well-observed detail and extraordinary affection that runs through almost every minute of this very special work.