Now they can tell all that and more just by reading our

Now they can tell all that and more just by reading our till receipts at the supermarket. The designing of food has become a volatile political issue, with the genetic modification of plants and animals, and the use of food packaging as advertising vehicles for entirely unrelated commercial products. Food design is now a minutely gauged science of second-guessing the public mood, as fickle as the pop charts. For scientists, getting a tomato to look tomatoey is now as technically demanding as designing a chair or a building.`Mies van der Rohe: Architecture and Design': Burrell Collection, Glasgow (0141 649 7151) to 29 August. `Food: Design and Culture': Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (0141 287 2700) to 22 August.. Our leading exponent of comic exasperation shuffles on to the Royal Exchange stage in a Coca-Cola t-shirt and battered trainers.

If this stooped, dishevelled figure, with the grizzly white beard and sharp blue eyes isn't Victor Meldrew, then he must be his impoverished brother. It's smart thinking to cast Richard Wilson in Waiting For Godot. Samuel Beckett requires actors to inject an upbeat vitality into magnificently downbeat remarks. Wilson does this (and some), seeming to heave lines out of his stomach, as if testing how far he can hawk them.

He's also an impressive digester of information, staring in jaw-dropped amazement, for instance, at Pozzo's foul treatment of his servant Lucky. I've never seen the two vagrants so widely contrasted. As Vladimir, Wilson gives a large, demonstrative performance. As Estragon, Brian Pettifer is just as (if not more) effective, giving a low-key, blank, thoughtful one. The only drawback is the age gap which looks wide enough for these lifelong friends to be father and son.Their incisive Scots accents set them apart from the booming sounds of the shires that enter with Nicky Henson's Pozzo. In cords and boots, you might find this Pozzo in half the pubs in Gloucestershire. Cruel and sentimental he jerks on the red rope round the neck of James Duke's salivating Lucky and pulls a hanky out to cry.This is a strong cast. But the decisive detail in Matthew Lloyd's involving production is that it takes place in the round.

This strips it of the vaudeville elements that were beautifully caught by Alan Dobie and Julian Glover in Peter Hall's production at the Piccadilly.Instead, as we watch the characters circle back and forth round the tree, there is a stronger feeling of inclusiveness: it's not just about them, it's us too This emphasis underlines the character of Beckett's world. It may be set outdoors on a country road, but its mental atmosphere is urban, theatrical, enclosed and male.These figures circle a tree that might have been sculpted out of the inner wires of a computer One day, they say, is the same as another. When the tree sprouts leaves, Julian McGowan's designs give us five illuminated green lights. Probably the most important play of this century offers a partial, denuded vision You wish Beckett had gone fishing. Or run a creche.Half the playwrights in Britain seem to be hard at work on a brand-new translation of one of only five plays by Chekhov.