IN A chillingly Kafkaesque opening, Vanishing Point Theatre’s Tomorrow has a mysterious ancient cripple dragging himself across a darkened stage.

Like some incubus, he clings relentlessly to a helpful passer-by on the way to visit his wife in the maternity hospital.

A dimly perceived workshop trio produce full head and face masks depicting ravaged old age and, as the play moves into a more recognisable world of an old people’s home, our good Samaritan is now forcibly fitted with his mask and becomes a victim of the universal ageing process.

As we recognise the nightmare helplessness and hopelessness of the inmates, this powerful, multinational collaborative production, conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton, might make its audiences question the saying “Never begrudge old age.” It is a privilege denied to many.

A Gambler’s Guide to Dying from the Traverse home stable provides an unexpected antidote to morbid thoughts.

Gary McNair tells the story of his grandad, lovingly described as a “liar, cheat, addict, hero, story-teller” but above all “the crazy bastard that bet his life’s savings on beating cancer.”

It all starts when grandad bets on England beating Germany in the 1966 World Cup final. He has to take his life in his hands when he faces the violent anger of his mates in a Gorbals pub — only the Scots could see this result as “their greatest ever defeat when they weren’t even playing.”

As the story progresses, the bond between grandfather and grandson grows ever stronger and the fact that grandad loses his final glorious bet takes nothing from this warming celebration of life.

Human resilience and determination against the odds are also central to Bryony Kimmings and Tim Grayburn’s Fake It ‘Til You Make It.

The couple present their own “love story” but this is no rom-com.

Grayburn tells us with difficulty of his bouts of intense clinical depression — “I didn’t realise how dark it would get and how it would affect everyone around me.”

The show itself is clearly part of the shared struggle to bring Grayburn through a state that cannot be “cured” but only understood and coped with. Sparkling with fun and music, the production is anything but depressing and there’s even dancing —“This is clinical depression in its simplest format … with mambo music.”

The strength of Crash by Andy Duffy lies in the splendid one-man performance from Jamie Michie in a monologue from a City trader whose wife is killed in a car crash when he is driving and who subsequently struggles to reinvent himself in the world of high finance.

But it promises more than it delivers. Apart from revealing what we all know, that the City is a jungle, the drama is part depiction of a man whose lifestyle based on making money has produced a selfish disregard for others and part putative thriller.

Ending up richer than ever through sheer luck, did he jealously murder his new partner or not?

The ever-inventive Tim Crouch presents another of his meta-theatre studies, which is more fascinating in how theatre works than what is says.

In An Oak Tree there are two actors, Crouch and one other chosen afresh each performance without more than a cursory preparation designed to reassure the volunteer that he or she will not face undue embarrassment.

The newcomer, male or female, is given constant instructions by Crouch on stage — what to say and how to behave — as the plot unfolds.

A stage hypnotist who has accidentally killed a child in a road accident comes face to face with the child’s father during his performance.

This is a play that grips our attention on two levels, both in following the development of the story and the complex relationship of the performers.

Finally the Belgian conceptual theatre artist, Valentijn Dhaenens’s Pardon/In Cuffs examines the relationship between the judges and the judged in a three-hander piece drawn from French legal system transcripts.

In a series of confrontations on a revolving stage the female prosecutor in a slinky evening dress plays the game of justice, at times changing places with the accused.

The point is that our roles in life are often both as accuser and accused, a kind of mirror image.

As always, these Traverse productions leave audiences not only entertained but thinking and discussing too.