THEATRE / Worth getting out of bed for: Sarah Hemming on the West End transfer of Arthur Miller's The Last Yankee and breakdowns on the Fringe

There are, in fact, five characters in Arthur Miller's The Last Yankee, only one is in such a state of depression that she never gets out of bed. The others, fortunately for the play, are at a different stage - one where they can talk about it. And they talk about it so well that the Young Vic's fine production - not an obvious bet for commercial success - first sold out, then extended its run and now moves to the West End.

The danger involved in such a transfer is that it loses the intimacy and intensity of the Young Vic's in-the-round auditorium. David Thacker, in restaging his production, has made a virtue of the proscenium arch at the Duke of York's. Here the characters are on a raised platform against a blue wash. This gives them the appearance of being marooned on a raft, all at sea.

Miller contrasts two marriages; two wives in hospital with nervous depression, two husbands visiting them. In structure, his play is beautifully worked out: the two couples are diametrically opposed and it proceeds rather like a square dance - first the men do a turn, then the women, then one couple, then all four together.

But, in analysis, Miller is too fine a playwright to simplify. Neither marriage is in very good shape, but that is not the sole reason for the wives' breakdowns. Leroy, the carpenter, blames his wife's illusion-fostering upbringing in a fiercely proud Swedish family. 'We were all brought up expecting it to be wonderful,' she agrees - but she traces her stress partly to his self-induced poverty. Meanwhile Karen, the businessman's wife, has all the trappings of prosperity and success. They have all to some extent been cheated by the American Dream - as have so many of Miller's characters - but this is allied to a more existential fear of purposelessness. There are many strands to this sense of failure, and Miller unpicks them with painful honesty.

It is a play full of uncomfortable truths and brilliantly observed humour. 'Tremendous parking space down there,' sweats the beefy businessman, groping for communication and safe ground after a run-in about values with Leroy - the 'Last Yankee' of the title who has turned his back on gold-seeking. The acting could scarcely be bettered. Helen Burns's dumpy, timorous Karen is terrified of her bullish husband (David Healey, giving a fine performance as a man hopelessly out of his depth). Margot Leicester (taking over from Zoe Wanamaker) has a stately beauty which she uses wisely, revealing flashes of the gorgeous girl beneath the layers of pills and anxiety, a woman trapped between respect for her husband's integrity and contempt for the poverty it involves. And Peter Davison's kind Leroy can also be irritating, reminding us that while Miller may back Leroy's rejection of the rat race, he doesn't hold him up as a cast-iron solution to America's problems.

We're witnesses to a breakdown in The Pigeon (BAC) as well, though it is dramatised in a very different style. John Harvey's play, adapted from the novel by Patrick (Perfume) Suskind, takes us through a life in the night of stocky security guard Jonathan Noel. Noel, when we meet him, has just checked into a seedy Parisian hotel in a state of some distress. Why can't he go home? Has he committed some crime? No: Noel reveals that he is terrified of a pigeon that has taken up residence outside his front door.

As Noel begins to confide to an 'inner voice', it becomes apparent that the pigeon is just the final straw in a life buckling under monotony and loneliness. Barry Stanton, as the fastidious, prejudiced Noel, is both contemptible and pitiable, as he boasts of his 55,000 hours spent 'thinking about nothing' and his seven-by-eleven room. Some of the writing is horribly vivid and, as Noel is drawn by his inner voice (the wry, spry Henry Woolf) back through his past, you share his load and also the profound relief as he breaks down, to emerge, Scrooge-like, a changed personality.

The therapy play is limited as a theatrical experience, however, and while Terence Lodge tries to overcome this by inventive staging of key scenes, his production can't quite escape a tunnelled feeling. It also loses something by hitting the top too soon. Perhaps more would be gained by having the full force of his breakdown creep up on us. That said, there is enjoyment in the relationship between Noel and the voice, as Stanton and Woolf team up like a music hall act.

At the Lyric Studio, ACTreact have boldy chosen to stage Oktoberfest, Odon von Horvath's dissection of a society in breakdown. Horvath's 'folk play' illustrates the effect of the 1930s Depression by charting the behaviour of a small group of individuals at the Munich fair. Kevin Knight's ambitious production is staged using a manually operated revolve, which spins around to emphasis the fact that the characters are on a social roller-coaster, and to highlight the discrepancy between the fun of the fair and the plight of those attending it.

It doesn't take long to guess why the company has chosen this piece: Horvath shows us the corrosive effects of redundancy and poverty, and introduces those who sink and those who swim (thieving or sleeping their way to prosperity). And Horvath, unlike Arthur Miller, is adamant in his analysis: 'There is no such thing as a bad person,' says one character. 'People are products of their environment.'

It's a dark, fascinating play, and the production catches well its lurid, garish quality - although the night I saw it, it was far too slow. Some good performances will also only gain from added zip - Alex Dower's brutish Franz, Saira Todd's desperate Karoline and Robin Malyon's timid tailor.

The Last Yankee is at Duke of Yorks, London WC2 (071-836 5122)

The Pigeon at BAC, London SW11 (071-223 2223).

Oktoberfest at Lyric Studio, London W6 (081-741 8701)

(Photograph omitted)