Across Oka/ Rafts And Dreams, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Sometimes, in Rafts and Dreams, it feels as though we've sailed in real time on a raft to Africa; in Across Oka it's as though we've been waiting all our lives for the white crane's eggs to hatch. At the very least, we've been journeying through lives and countries, reality and fantasy, tenderness and wisdom. It says much for the craftsmanship and gentle vision of the Yorkshire playwright Robert Holman that - in an age when speed is of the essence, connections must be of utmost clarity and people are too easily categorised - his slow, dream-like worlds draw in an audience, opening shutters on unimagined vistas. Old values and emerging new directions jostle for supremacy. Life is laid out here, painful and imperfect.

In the Royal Exchange Theatre's welcome focus on Holman's eloquent work, three of his plays enjoy rehearsed readings while two of his others are staged in the versatile studio space, minimally designed, and opened out at either end to give an impression of airy endlessness. Both Across Oka and Rafts and Dreams are cast from a small pool of excellent actors. Both show off the talent of fresh directorial voices at the Exchange, Sarah Frankcom in the former, Tim Stark the latter.

The family relationships in Across Oka are complex, each unpeeled layer revealing a different, unexpected facet of an individual's feelings, each character painted with assurance and blinding honesty. The world becomes suddenly smaller as the action transfers from the north of England to the old Soviet Union. Yet horizons are enlarged as we follow the progress of two fledgling youths and the embryos of two rare white Siberian cranes. It's hard to say which are the more delicate or which require the greater nurturing. One fears for the fragility of both.

In Rafts and Dreams two men uproot a tree in London and suddenly we're launched on an epic journey, cast adrift on a raft amid melted polar ice caps and the flotsam and jetsam of five humans desperately seeking understanding, love, wholeness - and, in one case, a cure for a phobia of touching anything dirty. The panoramic view here is enormous, as we're engulfed in the past life of one character whose natural development has been swamped by early experiences in the child sex trade, another whose brain has been straitjacketed by the army and one whose future is an open book.

There's a stage poetry and a magnificence about these plays that is strangely humbling, due in no small part to the sensitive acting and sympathetic, understated productions.

In rep until 18 October (0161-833 9833)