By Brian Beacom

A THEATRE show can take you to places you never expected to visit, and at times leave you high and dry.

But when it all works well, the emotions are engaged in a way that’s unimaginable.

This year’s theatre in Glasgow has featured some stunning productions. In April, the trilogy of James Plays by Rona Munro ran at the King’s.

And somehow good scripts, telling of the imagined tales of three generations of Stewart kings who ruled Scotland in the 15th century, were taken onto a whole new level by top-level direction and some very good acting.

May revealed a musical theatre surprise which was also an event. Pop cult hero Newton Falkner starred in American Idiot, a very loose biography of Green Day’s early years.

Despite no real narrative and a set design featuring a post-apocalyptic theme the sheer energy of the music allowed the audience to forget the lack of meaningful writing.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour returned to Glasgow in the same month, the critically-acclaimed stage adaptation of Alan Warner’s cult Scottish novel The Sopranos, by Lee Hall.

And while the Lomond Theatre at the SECC isn’t a welcoming room the show still convinced as a brilliant piece of musical theatre and a credit to the National Theatre of Scotland.

There was some clever, and bold writing in Oran Mor production Vinyl Idols, in June.

Written by Debbie Hannan and Andy McGregor and set in a record shop, the play told of a twenty-five year-old who spends most of her time in her head - and her head maintains only a passing relationship with reality.

Somehow Elvis, Sinatra, Cliff Richard and a clutch of vampires appeared on stage, and that all added to the fun.

There was nothing zany about Trainspotting, which came back to the Citizens’ stage twenty two years after the play’s first sell-out run.

And although a little overworked in terms of the cast size, Irvine Welsh’s masterpiece didn’t seem dated at all.

July however offered a rather darker, more delicious treat at the Tron Theatre in Lonesome West. Written by Martin McDonagh and directed by Andy Arnold, the play featured two bickering brothers who share a house in the wild west of Ireland.

The play featured great performances from Michael Dylan, Keith Fleming, David Ganly and Kirsty Punton.

Glasgow’s play of the year however has to be A Steady Rain, writer Keith Huff’s story of two Chicago cops who are best buddies but their relationship is tested after the dark events of one night on the beat.

The writing was great but former River City star Andy Clark and Gary: Tank Commander’s Robbie Jack were sublime. The Tron production was an example of all that is great about theatre in Scotland.

Jings n’ crivvens, what can you say about the Broons? It wasn’t classic theatre but writer Rob Drummond managed to take an iconic, but two-dimensional cartoon strip and present it in a modern theatre context at the Theatre Royal.

We still don’t know the answer to the 80 year-old questions; why were the 11 Broons never re-housed from their tiny flat, and is Hen Broon gay? Yet, the Broons, quite simply, was braw.

So too was the Kinks musical, Lazy Afternoon, running at the King’s .

We knew the music would be great but there was also a strong narrative.

There was more great musical theatre in town. The Theatre Royal in November offered up Little Shop of Horrors, a show written back in 1960 it still worked thanks to great songs and a very funny script. Ten year-old James Ross loved it, which proves the show cuts across generations.

Glasgow was also blessed with the brilliant Citizen’s production of the Rivals, an elegant 18th-century comedy of manners directed by Dominic Hill.

And Willie McIlvanney’s 2004 play On The Sidelines was rightly repeated at Oran Mor in December as a celebration of the life of the writer.

Film director Gillies MacKinnon and actor Iain Robertson revealed a special relationship that began 22 years ago in cult film Small Faces.