Rafta, Rafta, Lyttelton, London That Face, Royal Court Upstairs, London Three Sisters, Arts Theatre, Cambridge

Don't share a bedroom with your own flesh and blood. Even too narrow a landing could drive you bonkers. No, you don't have to be Oedipus Rex to rumble that, at a certain age, flying the nest is a smart move. In Rafta, Rafta - Ayub Khan-Din's very enjoyable, new British-Asian comedy - Atul (Ronny Jhutti) has tied the knot with his sweetheart, Vina. The guests are celebrating at his parents' terrace house in Bolton, with sparkling saris, Indian nibbles and festive dancing. The snag is that Harish Patel's roly-poly, patriarchal Mr Dutt cannot stop putting his son down, whilst Meera Syal's salt-of-the-earth Mrs Dutt is busy in the kitchen.

Moreover, the skint newly-weds have to shack up in Atul's teenage bedroom and are prevented from consummating their marriage by farcical interruptions - flushing loos, collapsing mattresses, Mr D popping in for a chat. This familial fiasco takes a serious turn when Atul - impotent with the stress - reviles Vina. Often the audience is both laughing and caring intensely.

Having got British-Asian comedy rolling with his Nineties film comedy East Is East, Khan-Din is on a successful bandwagon here, splicing a vintage English scene together with modern yet tradition-observing Indian characters. Rafta, Rafta is actually a variation - or variAsian? - on Bill Naughton's working-class northern drama, All in Good Time from 1963. The long set speeches feel creaky and Vina's devoted dad is a mite wooden. Overwhelmingly, though, this is a warmly humane piece about generational and domestic irritations. It has universal appeal as well as offering a specific, delightful brew of Boltonese and sub-continental culture. Nicholas Hytner's production moves from the spectacular to the intimate with the whole two-storey house slowly rolling into view, crammed with velveteen furniture, patterned wallpaper and glowing colours. Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi is lovely as the smitten but never cowed Vina. Syal pops the balloon of her husband's ego with spot-on comic timing, and captures the rounded complexity of an exasperated yet fond wife. Still, Patel steals the show. His adorably ludicrous Mr Dutt is a big baby, wobbling around like a dancing dumpling blithely putting his foot in it then becoming vulnerable when he can't talk to his son.

The parent-child relations are darkly twisted in That Face, a very strong first play from Polly Stenham. The Royal Court, under artistic director Dominic Cooke, is on a drive to promote young blood. As for dramatis personae, sink-estate delinquents have been replaced here by a portrait of the beastly rich. Felicity Jones's petite, pouting Mia and her flouncing friend Izzy (Catherine Steadman), are boarding-school bullies. Back at home, Mia's divorced mother - Lindsay Duncan's Martha - is aslosh with booze and pills. She snuggles up creepily with her confused teenage son, Henry (Matt Smith), clinging to him and cold-shouldering her daughter.

In Jeremy Herrin's in-the-round staging, Martha's rumpled bed hogs centre stage. The drama is climactically cranked up and, at root, old-fashioned with echoes of Noel Coward's The Vortex. Nonetheless, this domestic nightmare, with its adolescent panic and rage, touches a nerve; Jones, Steadman and Stenham are names to watch. Duncan is riveting and Smith is electric - a neurotic, gangling youth with a capacity for feverous explosions. When do we get to see his Hamlet?

Last but not least, a quietly world-class production of Chekhov's Three Sisters is touring, staged by Cheek by Jowl with an all Russian cast (and English surtitles). Olga, Masha and Irina, of course, long to escape their late father's provincial home even whilst being squeezed into the box room by their brother's bourgeois wife. The web of social interactions is beautifully detailed in Declan Donnellan's production. The soliloquies and philosophising speeches are delivered out towards the audience. This ingeniously flows on from the opening where Irina and Olga talk, gazing out of the window, and it extends the idea that no one has two-way conversations even as it reaches out to us - the future people about whom they philosophise, tragicomically hoping that our lives will be better.

Nick Ormerod's monochromed set, picturing a dark townhouse, backs up the sense of doom and mortality that haunts the play. The aged servants look, unnervingly, like death-heads, the sisters' cruel, snobbish rudeness is pinpointed too, counterbalanced by their still girlish giggling playfulness. Wonderful.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Rafta, Rafta' (020-7452 3000) to 23 June; 'That Face' (020-7565 5000) to 19 May; 'Three Sisters' touring to Northern Stage, Newcastle (0191 230 5151) Wed to Sat and the Barbican, London (0845 120 7550), 15-19 May

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