An intriguing line-up at a "Murphy's Exclusive Audience" show at Cork Opera House last Saturday night saw local act Des Bishop set the scene with some scabrous contemporary material before drawing on his Noo Yawk background to introduce the audience to some improvised rap routines - which worked delightfully well.

The Apres Match trio then consolidated its position as a progressive live act. Never depending purely on the natural strength of their mimicry, Risteard Cooper, Gary Cooke and Barry Murphy pushed at the linguistic barriers and came up with a slightly surreal word salad of a performance. Their set-piece finish, a cleverly thought-out deconstruction of the Michael Flatley phenomenon, capped a strong set.

Tommy Tiernan is breaking in his new show and, on Saturday's evidence, he's going the raw, confessional route. Kicking off with some clever stuff about the use of sentimentality in advertising, he veered into a section on drug use before offering up his own ingenious solution to the current Napster Internet music downloading debate.

Having established a rhythm of sorts, he then dug deep into his personal life to come up with some fraught and edgy material that obviously divided the audience. It was courageous and challenging stuff as Tiernan talked intimately about his domestic life and his relationship with his partner. Riffing away on the concepts of commitment and responsibility, there was a real "beat" feeling to the material.

Needing to sandpaper down the rougher edges of this new set and gather together the material a bit more, Tiernan is nevertheless making a creative leap. And his closing routine, which compared the black experience in the US with the Traveller experience in Ireland, was handled with aplomb.

Tommy Tiernan performs at Vicar Street, Dublin, from Thursday until Monday at 8 p.m. To book, phone 01-6097788.