Galway Arts Festival

Various venues, Galway

Jul 11-24 091-566577 galwayartsfestival.ie

If you had emerged, still reeling, from Enda Walsh's exhilarating Disco Pigsin 1996, and been told that 15 years later its makers would be performing solo shows on the festival circuit, would you call it progress?

As Landmark Productions bring Walsh back together with Cillian Murphy for a new version of his 1999 monologue Misterman (pictured), and Corcadorca reunites Disco Pigsdirector Pat Kiernan with Walsh for the wordless Request Programme, the pillars of Galway Arts Festival's theatre line-up represent both the successes and economy of their time.

Does a solo focus suggest a contraction in this year's programme or the artform? True, another creditable solo show, Pat Kinevane's Silent for Fishamble, sits next to Propeller's Shakespeare double bill ( Comedy of Errorsand Richard III), although dance is less conspicuous, folded into Featherhead's physical performance/music experiment The Devil's Spine Bandand the neo-circus of The Controlled Falling Project.

Local representation in the City of the Tribes is limited to An Taibhdhearc's Bás Taismeach Ainríalaíand GYT's Love and Money.

In one pleasing paradox, the festival asks people to come together to witness the phenomenon, in important, revealing counterbalance: alone, together.

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