It's half-way through his Christmas revue at the Everyman and John Spillane is coming over all contrite. "God love us you must be worn out from clapping," he consoles the sell-out crowd, before delivering yet another turned well-turned ditty designed to aggravate the complaint.

With the season that's in it, and with all sorts of likely characters knocking around the gilded auditorium, this show was always going to descend into something of a love-in.

The poet Patrick Galvin breezes on stage for a quick and raucous recital, Peadar O Riada is in from out west to offer up a couple of beautiful piano pieces, and Aine Whelan and Mick Daly join the party to sweeten the brew with some elegant sugar-spun harmonies.

Then there's Declan Sinnott, a guitarist with talent dripping from his fingers, cutting up some bluesy boogie madness live and direct from the Lee Delta, or unrolling a little evocative Spanish romance, or subverting the genres with a rockabilly sean nos stomp.

But Spillane, of course, dominates centre stage and as he gently steers us through his vast back-catalogue of understated gems, you start to divine the depth of his abilities. Like the best short stories, his songs are peopled by hapless characters not altogether sure how things are going to pan out. Tunes like Everything's Turning To Gold Cathy, All The Ways You Wander and, from the Nomos odyssey, I Won't Be Afraid Anymore, are lightly rendered in that distinctive high soft voice and while their physical geography is Corkonian, they map internal journeys too. They are emotive but restrained, the feeling magnified by the sense of quiet.