Dublin Fringe Festival reviews

An Evening with Prionsias O'Ferfaille ****
Bewley's Café Theatre

The eponymous Prionsias is a thespian of the old school, who has been mounting dull plays in a fringe festival for many years, and is close to being shunted offstage by a new female director.

His struggle for survival, nested among forays into past events and family complications, is the subject of this very entertaining comedy.

The plentiful wit is eclectic, finding its sources in anything from Beckett to razzmatazz. Liam Hourican's mirth-making Prionsias is joined by other characters of similar achievement. Eamonn Doyle is the lumpen Finbar as an improbable agent and also plays other roles. Leonor Bethencourt, John Maguire, Allison McKay and Lynette Callaghan are central to the loony tune that constitutes the plot.

There is a Marx Brothers feel to it all, generating the laughter of an inverted normality. The creative writers are David Crann and Liam Hourican, who also directs. (Until Sun) Gerry Colgan

Bear Hug ****
SS Michael and John

This diverting production will appeal particularly to the parents of teenage sons. "His hands used to be so tiny and perfect and now they're just big paws," says Linda, mother of Michael. She means it literally: Michael has turned into a bear, a metamorphosis that brings with it issues of hygiene, communications, manners, and societal adaptation. They've tried sending him to a zoo, but he wasn't happy there. Now he is destroying their house, turning it into a bear's den. His mother tries to feed him and he bites her hands off. His father tries to hug him and Michael rends him with his claws. Boy into bear may be an obvious metaphor, but Robin French's script is clever, and Donal Courtney's direction is well-judged. The accomplished cast - Jacqueline Fitzpatrick as Linda, Philip Judge as David, and Jose Montero as Michael - adds a gloss to the proceedings. (Until Sat) Noeleen Dowling

Danny and Chantelle
(Still Here) ***
Crawdaddy POD

This imaginatively profane two-hander from Gentle Giant Productions will inevitably draw comparisons with Disco Pigs. Like Enda Walsh's near-canonical drama, Danny and Chantelle (Still Here), directed by the experienced Deirdre Molloy, employs vulgar demotic to explore the testy relationship between a pair of boozy, druggy young folk.

Phillip McMahon's play is, however, less ambitious in its use of language and less experimental in its approach to narrative. Still, there is much to enjoy in the kids' weekend odyssey through Dublin's loudest bars. McMahon (bemused monkey) and Georgina McKevitt (angry sparrow) throw themselves at their roles with admirable gusto and the script features many salty one-liners.

I particularly enjoyed the description of a drunken women, mascara stripped by tears, as possessing a face like the Central Bank. It's just a shame that the plot, delivered mostly through first-person narratives, is so often hard to follow. (Until Sun) Donald Clarke

Dedalus Lounge *****
Samuel Beckett Theatre

Irish playwrights can't get enough of pubs as a setting, and Gary Duggan's new play sticks faithfully to a template we've often seen before. In his version, three friends, Daragh (Stephen Kealy), Danny (Steve Gunn) and Delphine (Aenne Barr), gather intermittently in their local Dublin pub between Christmas and New Year. It's not the most original idea, but Duggan's smart and lively script, shot through with black humour - "Christmas is great; you really get a chance to sit back and explore the pain in your life" - is consistently engaging. Sexuality, identity and friendship are the themes here, with all three characters swapping partners among themselves like interchangable Chinese boxes, as the Christmas drinks are taken and New Year counts down.

The histrionic ending on a rooftop is a disappointment of editing, but there are still plenty of good things about this play: a clever set, sharp writing, fine exploration of the boundaries of male friendship, and Kealy's excellent performance of wobbly bravado as self-appointed tough-man Daragh. (Until Sat) Rosita Boland

Diary of a Madman **
Andrews Lane Studio

Based on a Gogol short story, this familiar tale of a lower-rank civil servant bound in by boredom, frustration, disappointment, precipitating a descent into madness, is marred by the one-dimensional interpretation and declamatory style of the sole performer, Tim Casey. Nuance, subtlety, poignancy, are lost to a helter-skelter pace which is punctuated irregularly by the occasional pursuit of inappropriate laughter and the turning of pages to indicate a new diary entry. Only towards the very end is the pathos at the heart of it all allowed emerge. Both performance and tale indicated a potential which was sadly unfulfilled on the opening night despite the presence of many who were clearly friends and supporters of Black Canvas, the company who staged it. Duration is just over an hour, without an interval. (Until Sat) Patsy McGarry

Drive By ***
Pigeon House

We come for the thrill ride but must stay for the lesson. Attracted by the twin frissons of site-specific performance and the adrenalin-addled subculture of boy racers, motorists sneak into the dark of the docklands, tune their radios into the dialogue, and peak through their windscreens at the action.

Performance Corporation is well aware of its subject's allure - the exhilaration of acceleration, the near-ecstasy of youthful nihilism - but the production inevitably comes to a fretful, screeching halt over its social consequences.

Caught between extremes - impressively lit expansive exteriors and scrupulously evinced psychological interiors; the need to both sensationalise and moralise - writer Tom Swift and director Jo Mangan periodically shift into neutral. A non-narrative melange of voices, drifting through a fluctuating sound design, prompts Mangan into constructing graceful slow-motion sequences - a vehicular ballet later matched by Ailish Symons and Aidan Turner dancing in the headlights. Trading on excitement, however, it cannot refrain from chiding with a dutiful, vaguely hypocritical conclusion: getting us all revved up, then slapping us with penalty points. (Until Sat) Peter Crawley

Every Day Above Ground *****
Project

It begins with an ending and ends as it begins, with the death of a hero, Billy the Kid. A "theatrical exploration" of Michael Ondaatje's fragmented novella, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, SaBooge Theatre's production is a fluid, shifting, site-less piece that takes place somewhere between the life and legend, and the life and death, of Billy the Kid.

The production doesn't enact a narrative in any traditional way; rather, it performs a series of adventurous and moving theatrical moments conjured up by evocative, shape-shifting lighting, original sound design, and a superb ensemble cast. The camera metaphor captures the essence of the existential quest at the heart of the company's creative collaboration: our lives, like Billy's, are not over when we die; they are preserved in the images we manage to capture. (Until Sat) Sara Keating

Hold Me **
SS Michael and John

This Norwegian show from Voksnebarn is minimalist in production values. No set, no lighting, no sound, no cast-list. It almost didn't have a venue either, opening a day late, at a different time and in a different location to the one advertised, so those who actually found it were doing well. Unfortunately, it also had no translation: the Fringe programme does not tell you the performance is in Norwegian.

What happens? The four very young cast members, three girls and a boy, raced up and down St Michael and John for an hour, writing graffiti on theatre benches and knocking over and literally breaking on-site furniture (did they have permission for this?). Dried spaghetti featured in most scenes. As did screaming. The quartet screamed non-stop, making the most of the church's acoustics. A pointless outing. (Ends tomorrow) Rosita Boland

Revisions ***
Project Cube

Theology shares a flat with post-structuralist theory in contemporary Dublin: if that premise for a production grabs you, then look no further.

Making Strange Theatre Company has left behind the fantastically gaudy transsexual cabaret of Hedwig and the Angry Inch for a more overtly intellectual take on urban identity crises. Devised by the ensemble - Claudia Schwartz, Elaine Fox, Gavin Logue, Ionia Ni Chroinin, Joe Roch - under Megan Riordan's direction, five characters pack their music and memories in suitcases and go in search of . . . love, each other, themselves.

With the exception of a few brilliant comic sequences in which every symbol of Irishness is flung into the air with confident theatricality, these transient characters mainly engage in that old pursuit of the signifier for the signified. Whether it's matching images to words or words to meaning, this piece has just spent too much time in a library. (Until Sat) Helen Meany

The Drowning Room ***
Andrews Lane Studio

Verity Alicia Mavenawitz's play concerns the murder of a gay man and the gathering a year later, on the night after his attackers have received light sentences, of a small group to pay final tribute to him. The initial six consist of his wife, his brother and four male friends, three of them gay; their anger at the sentencing is unrestrained. They are joined later by the father of one of the killers, come to express his remorse. His words are at first rejected violently but, by the end, the group has accepted him in a mawkish ceremony that seals a sense of artificiality in the play as a whole. The author's causes push too many open doors, and her scenario lacks conviction.

The cast, directed by Nuala Kelly, bring to their roles an intensity that absorbs some of the script's stridency. (Until Sat) Gerry Colgan

The Evils of Tobacco and The Bear *****
Filmbase

This splendid production combines wit, sophistication, absurdist comedy and some very accomplished acting. It demands to be seen. Based on Chekhov's short stories, both pieces portray people who have reached the end of their tether emotionally. Rory Nolan's Ivan Ivanovich, in The Evils of Tobacco, is a man driven to insanity by a houseful of daughters refusing to get married; Joanne Mitchell's Popova, in The Bear, is taking a revenge on her faithless dead husband by smothering her own vitality and burying herself literally in their house. Excellent support comes from Jaimie Carswell as the volatile Smirnov and Dermot Magennis as the bemused servant, Luka. Carswell's metamorphosis from vengeful creditor to doting lover is utterly diverting, while Magennis has perfected the art of making even his gait seem funny. Fast-moving, polished, and absorbing, this hour-long production leaves a feeling of having participated in real theatre. (Until Sun; matinee on Sat) Noeleen Dowling

The Grandmother ****
Andrews Lane Studio

Irish company Monkeyshine have brought a sweet'n'lithe offering to the Fringe table. The Grandmother, devised by actors Kareen Pennefather and Colm O'Grady, is a simple story imaginatively told. Crabby old Granny lives in a lighthouse on the ocean, far away from a world that has disappointed her, spending her time pelting seagulls with pebbles and generally behaving rather badly. Then along comes a tiny boat with a red sail carrying George, her only, and unwelcome, grandson. Gradually, due to George's impish and gleefully boyish behaviour, the old lady's frozen old heart begins to melt. Told with confidence, authority, an old sheet, a papier-mâché lighthouse and a clever vanity case, this is child's play at its best.

The midweek lunchtime show is at a difficult time for most children; let's hope Granny gets out and about post-festival. Definitely one for younger children to enjoy, and even my 10-year-old left with a smile on his face. (Runs until Sat) Hilary Fannin

The Kings of the Kilburn High Road ****
T36

The consistently impressive aspect of this Arambe Productions version of Jimmy Murphy's The Kings of the Kilburn High Road is the manner in which the all-African cast make the familiar language of the Irish brickie in London something rare, utterly topical and new again. The emotional dynamic of the story brings us beyond the deliberate cliche of the argot to a point where we are complicit with the tragedy of six Irish labouring men lost in a London and an Ireland that has forgotten them.

Thanks to some powerful acting from the ensemble, and in particular from Jare Jegebefume as Jap Kavanagh, a man who refuses to acknowledge the reality of his plight, Arambe retains all the potency of the original while delivering an unforgettable homily that will haunt the conscience of a modern Ireland that has itself become a site for the shattered and ignored dreams and hopes of the poor immigrant. (Until Sun) Patrick Brennan

The Sewers ***
Smock Alley

In the visually striking surroundings of a slaughterhouse made from paper walls, Banana Bag and Bodice's The Sewers is set in a sort of post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout scenario. A deranged, silent figure known as The Mechanic (Rod Hipskind) cleans the perpetually filthy floors of the abattoir. Jessica Jellife and Heather Peroni play two women who are possibly sisters, one of whom is the wife of Husband (acted by the play's author, Jason Craig). This storyline is then undercut by the fact that Husband is also an aspiring, pretentious playwright, writing the story before our very eyes, so to speak.

The Sewers, however, is less than the sum of its too many parts. Even when we are witnessing the deconstruction of theatrical illusion we should still be left with a sense of profundity. Instead, all we get is triviality, albeit of an inventive kind. The Sewers gags on too much of the tongue-in-cheek. (Until Sun) Patrick Brennan