Showing @ Traverse Theatre until 7 May

Pandas is the latest play from award-winning playwright Rona Munro, whose screen work includes the recent film Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach. Set in and around the blossomed tranquillity of the meadows, Pandas follows three couples as they struggle with love, revenge and bullets in the buttocks.

After 536 e-mails, Lin Han (Crystal Yu) has come from China to meet Jie Hui (Siu Hun Li), whom she believes will be the man of her dreams. But Lin Han’s dreams of simple, instant love soon disappear as Hui’s business partner Andy (Keith Fleming) gets shot. As the prime suspect, Andy’s bitter ex Madeleine (Meg Fraser) is instantly attracted to the police officer questioning her, whose partner just happens to have left him the night before for Andy who is now fighting for his life in hospital.

Munro’s script is hilarious, and brilliantly performed by the six-strong cast who have the audience in stitches with their naturalistic and spot-on comic timing. Whilst a fairly well-balanced group, the standout performer is Fraser, who plays an impulsive yet humble bunny boiler with verbal diarrhoea like Bridget Jones on speed. Almost as enchanting is Yu as she captures a naive hysteria and bossiness typical of a teenager taking their first Bambi-on-ice steps into the world of love.

The first half has more pace and energy than the second, which all seems to tie together a little too neatly in the end. But this doesn’t detract from the overall quality of the production, making it yet another Traverse must-see.