No wonder Yo-Yo Ma is a star. It's not just that he's among the best cellists on the planet.

Sonata In D Minor - Debussy. Sonata In A - Fauré. Louange À L'Éternité De Jésus - Messiaen. Sonata In A - Franck

He has that rare, quiet showmanship that serves profound music-making. And at the National Concert Hall he had a perfect partner in pianist Kathryn Stott.

The all-French programme was unusual for its concentration on transcriptions of works for violin and piano, in the encores as well as in the main programme. In Fauré and Franck's sonatas in A, much of the time is spent in the upper register, and the strain usually shows. But not here, where a consistent parade of musical delights had little to do with fulfilling one's expectations of familiar repertoire.

The Franck in particular sounded as if it was to the cello born.

Effort was always appropriate to the musical result, and some of the most remarkable playing, from the piano as well as the cello, seemed effortless.

Of course, it wasn't. The quiet, long high note that opens Messiaen's Louange À L'Éternité De Jésus, the fifth movement of Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps, sounded as if it had always been there. The control of the quiet piano chords at that work's end was breath-stopping. The range of colour in Debussy's cello sonata was as extraordinary as the way rhythmic tension held together a performance that emphasised the fragmentary nature of that work's material. And in the Franck, new light was shed on music we thought we knew.

As a specimen of duo playing this was about as good as it gets: original, revealing and impeccable. One does not hear a concert like this even every year. - Martin Adams

Harry's Bar

Crypt, Dublin Castle

Colm Maguire's Harry's Bar is a seriously bad play that doesn't work well on any level. The plot veers from improbable to just plain silly, its characters are one-dimensional stereotypes of pub-gangster land and the dialogue has only a passing acquaintance with the way people speak. It is quite irredeemable.

Harry's ambition has always been to have his own select pub. His snooty wife puts up some of the money, and he raises the rest from a criminal source, a Mr Big. With one exception, his employees are dishonest, immoral and wholly unreliable. Only Galena, a Russian immigrant, doesn't cheat him. But it all falls apart, and just when Harry is disintegrating, Mr Big turns out to be a kind of fairy godfather, leading to a possibly happy ending. Yikes! Other characters include Lela, a vamp; Matty, a dishonest barman; Sharon, a barmaid who becomes pregnant; Joey, a gangster; Nigel, a gay Englishman; a couple of Dublin jossers and a tramp. Harry is excessively kind to them, his generosity fuelled by a constant intake of alcohol. They are walking clichés all, shaped by the lines they are given to speak. There is no way of assessing the acting and no point in naming the players. The play's the thing, and it drags them down.

In order to engage an audience, a play must operate from a base of credibility that is lacking here. The author directs it himself - usually a mistake, but I don't think it makes any difference this time.

Runs until April 19th -  Gerry Colgan

Hatched

Project Cube, Dublin

SaBooge Theatre's ambitious adaptation of an Angela Carter novel works superbly well on many levels. As practitioners of physical theatre based on the teachings of Jacques LeCoq, their natural milieu is buffoonery and clowning, and Carter sets her turn-of- the-century tale of the identity of otherness in the circus. It's potentially dense and heady, but the five actors and two musicians who make up the company authoritatively walk the fine line that must be negotiated between allegorical discourse and pratfall.

Does Fevvers really have wings? Or is it just another gag, a blag to bring in the punters, a pathetic attempt to raise herself above her shady upbringing? Is she genuine, a miracle, or a freak of nature? The trapeze artist wraps herself in a cloak of mystery but chooses to gift the journalist Jack Walser with her narrative. The journey sways between Fevver's uneasy relationship with objectification and Walser's eventual devotion to her myth. All this, and with plenty of sight gags and clowning.

The company translates the methods of LeCoq into a visual, embodied language that is absolutely germane to their story. Watching them is pure joy - not a wasted movement, not an insignificant gesture. If the show falters, it is in its length and the fact that several of the set pieces take us too far away from Fevvers and her journey.

Otherwise, this is professional, inventive and playful, a wonderful synthesis of theory and practice that is as entertaining as it is intelligent.

Runs until April 26th -  Susan Conley