Reviewed: Allergic to Beckett, The Liverpool Boat, The Chairs and Danny the Champion of the World

Allergic to Beckett Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Dublin

Past, present and future; worthless, meaningless and hopeless. A visit by Gary Jermyn (author and narrator) and his wife to Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days" left them resolved never to submit themselves to the Nobel Prize-winner's brand of nihilism again. But then came a festival celebrating the writer's centenary, and the social pressures became intense. They found themselves at a production of Endgame.

Apparently the ebullient director of the theatre - go on, guess - asserted that people don't understand how funny Beckett is, which filled our narrator, clearly not tuned to the subtle laughter of recognition, with confusion.

Disaster strikes during the performance as his nostrils react to something like pepper in the air and he begins to sneeze, an interminable nasal eruption.

The audience turns its attention to him, as does the on-stage cast. He does a bunk from the theatre.

It isn't pepper, but a kind of psychological allergy. He flees across the city, naming prominent landmarks as he goes, and reaches his car on Merrion Square. There he plays CDs of actor Barry McGovern reading from Beckett's novels, and the sneezing intensifies.

He tries to hide in a Dún Laoghaire pub, leaving the CDs in his open car, in the hope they will be stolen. When he returns, someone has dumped a second set of the CDs in the car.

So it goes for some 50 minutes, reaching a droll ending in tune with the amicably witty script. Gary Jermyn, while not a professional actor, is an excellent narrator and interpreter of his own material, assisted by a tape recorder - echoes of Krapp? - and the modulated direction of Michael James Ford. The show has, incidentally, been very big in Helsinki. Runs to Oct 21 - Gerry Colgan

Belfast Festival: The Liverpool Boat Dockers Club, Belfast

In the years following the onset of the Troubles in 1969, the expression "taking the Liverpool boat" had but a single meaning - buying a one-way ticket out of the chaos of the North to a new life on the other side of the Irish Sea.

Marie Jones and Liverpudlian writer Maurice Bessman have joined forces to capture snapshots of the cross-section of people fleeing blazing streets, family breakdown, paramilitary violence, sexual and social confusion and economic depression in search of something better across the water.

The storylines unfold in the seedily plush surroundings of the boat's cabaret lounge, where a third-rate crooner (Louis Emerick) uses his minor celebrity to entertain the passengers and prey on innocent young girls.

Red Lead Arts has found an atmospheric venue - the lounge bar of Belfast's Dockers Club, cleverly adapted by designer Niall Rea - for Carol Moore's fluidly directed production, which invites the audience into the action as companion drinkers and travellers. But this is a strange hybrid of a piece, in which neither music nor drama nor storytelling sit together entirely comfortably.

In the first act, the writing is unusually flat and it is a struggle to believe in some of the emerging relationships. The dramatic structure, however, enables tantalising glimpses into the unravelling of lives over the next 14 years and in the second act, set in 1983, meat is put onto the bones, enabling the fine cast to flex their muscles in genuinely moving scenes.

Notable among them are Norman's (Richard Clements) failure to introduce his partner Keith (Tony Devlin) to his frail, God-fearing mother (Frances Quinn), who believes that her prayers have at last been answered, and Packy Lee, Katie Tumelty and Gordon Fulton as a family whose rifts cannot be healed even by the death of the wife and mother, who had tried and failed to hold it all together. Runs until Nov 4 - Jane Coyle

The Chairs The Factory, Sligo

Absurdist plays revel in the discordant and the illogical - and provoke both laughter and bewilderment, often simultaneously. But, at its best, the theatre of the absurd also presents an entirely serious and easily understood idea: that life is chaotic, confusing, often ridiculous. This new Blue Raincoat production of Eugene Ionesco's 1952 absurdist classic is an outstanding example of the value of this approach.

Each of the play's elements has its own logic but, added together, they contradict each other, undermining the audience's sympathies and expectations. In other productions, this can result in superficiality: actors are sometimes tempted to overplay Ionesco's humour, while directors can mistakenly assume that the apparent chaos of the action means that the script itself shouldn't be taken too seriously.

In contrast, Niall Henry's production succeeds principally because of his team's fidelity to, and understanding of, the original text. Jamie Vartan's set follows Ionesco's instructions precisely, presenting a large semi-circular room with several doors in the walls, and two chairs centre-stage. Mikel Murfi, Ruth Lehane, and Ciarán McAuley show a detailed awareness of both the humour and subtlety of the script, delivering excellent performances that shift with an unruly zest from physical comedy to philosophical depth.

The willingness of Murfi and Lehane to give full expression to their characters' affection for each other gives the play pathos, but they also trust their roles enough to avoid sentimentality. Lighting by Michael Cummins assists this process, discreetly shifting the audience's attention around the stage to create a haunting atmosphere.

Chair after chair is added as the action progresses, each addition signalling a new approach to narration and stagecraft - until we reach a conclusion that is, perhaps paradoxically, both anti-climactic and cathartic. We're left with a vision of humanity that emphasises the absurdity of existence, but this production brilliantly affirms other essential aspects of our lives: compassion, human dignity and, most surprisingly, love. - Until Oct 21 at the Factory; Oct 26-28 at Town Hall Theatre Galway - Patrick Lonergan

Danny the Champion of  the World  The Helix, Dublin

This is one of Roald Dahl's lesser known stories. Written in the mid-1970s, it is set in a rural English landscape where the parallel worlds of landowning gentry and villagers collide.

Danny (Iain Ridley) is a nine-year-old boy who lives with his dad, a widowed car mechanic (Dafydd Emyr) on the edge of a village surrounded by a large country estate. The estate owner, Mr Hazell (Nick Wayland-Evans) is an obnoxious character who shows little respect for the villagers. They, likewise, show little respect for him and partake in pheasant poaching on his land.

Initially horrified that his dad would steal pheasants, Danny quickly becomes intrigued by the methods used. After rescuing his dad from a human trap set for poachers, Danny comes up with a clever plan to leave the estate empty of pheasants on the first day of the shooting season. Things get complicated when a council inspector reports that the caravan that Danny and his dad live in is unfit for human habitation. The villagers rally round - with a few clever scenes in which the audience join in - and eventually, even Mr Hazell grudgingly agrees the caravan can be modernised.

The Birmingham Stage Company's touring show is loyal to Dahl's story and the sets are particularly charming (the revolving caravan and cars are fantastic). The actors are a pleasant bunch, although no one actor shines, and instead, everything hangs on how interesting the story is. For some children, the moral tale of the mechanic and his son being allowed to stay in their home may be enough. I suspect for others, the story needed the punch of an heroic lead actor. And maybe, it's because this particular Danny isn't quite the Champion of the World he is supposed to be.

Continues (for aged five and over) on Fri at 7pm and Sat at 2.30pm and 7pm - Sylvia Thompson