Under The Whaleback, Royal Court Upstairs, London<br></br>Scenes From The Big Picture, NT Cottesloe, London<br></br>Great Expectations, Old Vic, Bristol<br></br>Tell Me On A Sunday, Gielgud, London

Seasick but ship-shape

Under The Whaleback, Royal Court Upstairs, London
Scenes From The Big Picture, NT Cottesloe, London
Great Expectations, Old Vic, Bristol
Tell Me On A Sunday, Gielgud, London

A life jacket would have been a welcome accessory in the theatre this week. Everybody was setting sail, imagining better things over the horizon, or just struggling to keep their head above water. Unaccustomed as I am to spending an evening on a storm-tossed fishing trawler, I wondered – midway through Under The Whaleback – if the finale was to be one almighty wave crashing in and engulfing the whole audience. However, Richard Bean's outstanding new play is more subtly engrossing, directed by Richard Wilson with no elaborate gimmicks. Depicting three generations of men from Hull – stuck on sidewinders destined for dangerous Arctic waters – this is a rite-of-passage drama and a portrait of a dying industry that manages to be funny, distressing and astutely plotted. It feels like an instant modern classic – following in the wake of ocean-going plays by Tennessee Williams, Athol Fugard and others.

In the Court's tiny attic, you are, in fact, below deck. Alan Williams's craggy-faced Cassidy is reeling drunk as he tumbles down the companion way (or ladder) into the forecastle (sleeping quarters) of the Kingston Jet. This is something like a pub snug, only with coffin-sized bunks punched into its wood panelling. Cassidy has the new boy in tow, Iain McKee's Darrell, who looks appalled when the wild old boozer insists he's his long-lost dad.

All that takes place in 1965. By 1972, Cassidy's drowned, possibly on purpose, while McKee's Darrell seems more self-assured, but he's holed up with three clashing shipmates. Norman (Matthew Dunster), a laddy loose-cannon, goes increasingly crazy as the high seas roar above the churning engines and keep throwing everyone to starboard – until they keel right over and the lights gutter out. Thirty years later, Darrell (now played by Williams) is closing up the now-anchored trawler-museum when he's confronted by Pat (played by Matthew Dunster), a manic drug-dealer, who wants to know – in turn – who his dad was and why Darrell alone survived the shipwreck in 1972.

Maybe Dunster's Pat, as a darkly comic delinquent, is too caricatured. The doubling is also momentarily confusing as Williams hardly resembles McKee. But that aside, the acting is terrific – droll, realistic, never too in-your-face. Physical violence, when it comes, is hair-raisingly perfunctory and you can almost taste the salt off Bean's dialogue. Though he writes "lads' plays", he also quietly brings in the "feminine", and the mellowing of McKee and Williams' characters, in the end, celebrates Hull's gentler, unsung heroes and the possibility of escaping your past.

Belfast's Owen McCafferty was, along with Bean, one of the bright sparks showcased in the National's recent Loft season. His latest piece, Scenes From The Big Picture, is more ambitiously panoramic than his fine pub play, Closing Time. Twenty-plus urban characters cross paths in a shop, a bar, a hospital and a drug-dealer's flat. Various couples are under strain because of childlessness and terminal illness, affairs, criminal threats and a lack of openness. This is, in some ways, a picture of an ordinary day's damage and pain, with Ulster's political troubles seeping in too. A sweeter taste is left in the mouth by the teenage girl who wants to go swimming with the nice guy from her thuggish boyfriend's gang.

Peter Gill's production does McCafferty proud. Fine naturalistic acting – from Michelle Fairley, Patrick O'Kane and others – is set off by Alison Chitty's stylised, spartan design where everything is painted cobalt blue. The cast also generate speed and fluidity, sprinting out from the front row as required. McCafferty himself has a ear for terse chat and is warmly humane. However, his scenarios feel a tad cliched. So Scenes From The Big Picture, which might have been modern Belfast's answer to Ulysses, ultimately feels more like a soap.

Great Expectations also fails to live up to its title. Bristol Old Vic's new artistic directors, David Farr and Simon Reade, are injecting young blood into this long-ailing venue. And Gordon Anderson's staging of Dickens' classic (adapted by Farr), boasts exhilarating, expressionistic visuals by Dick Bird. The graveyard where young Pip is accosted by the convict, Magwitch, is a chasm scattered with wooden boxes. At home, Pip's terrifying relatives stare down from a dining table that slopes like a dizzying cliff-face. Then, when he's attempting to become a London gent, industrial crates open up to reveal lavish but disturbingly cramped interiors.

Alas, Anderson's directing isn't first class, with lame mock-balletic interludes. Magwitch's arch-enemy arrives on a wobbly trolley for the row-boat battle, and Aidan McArdle's sturdy Pip is surrounded by some frightful actors. Jenny Quayle's Miss Haversham is ludicrously wide of the mark – looking gym-fit under a grey wig the size of a sheep. Opportunities remain for great improvements.

Finally, Andrew Lloyd Webber has been tinkering with Tell Me On A Sunday since the 1970s. Denise Van Outen stars in the latest update of his solo song-cycle where a girl – supposedly from Ilford – escapes to America and embarks on heady affairs with three Mr Wrongs. One might be forgiven for thinking our heroine was a case for care-in-the-community as she croons to invisible companions on park benches. Still, the giant projections of Manhattan skyscrapers and Hollywood pools in Matthew Warchus's production are relatively snazzy. Van Outen is extremely easy on the eye and sings with technical panache. However, her accent is all over the place, and comedian Jackie Clune – adding to Don Black's original lyrics – mainly just tosses in modish references to DVDs, emails and botox. Lloyd Webber knows how to write a romantic tune, and that's extraordinarily clear whenever swelling orchestrations are pared down to just piano chords. There's also one startlingly funky new in-flight number, "Haven In The Sky". But then dated pop-rock sidles back in hoping we won't notice the crow's feet. Hardly vital viewing.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Under The Whaleback': Royal Court, London SW1 (020 7565 5000), to 3 May; 'Scenes From The Big Picture': NT Cottesloe, London SE1 (020 7452 3000), to 21 June; 'Great Expectations': Bristol Old Vic (0117 987 7877), to 3 May; 'Tell Me On A Sunday': Gielgud, London W1 (020 7494 5065), booking to 26 July