Irish Times writers review a selection of events in Cork, Belfast and Dublin

Under Milk Wood , Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

Dylan Thomas sub-titled his Under Milk Wood as "a play for voices". Marion Wyatt, director of this Stage Centre production, must have mis-read this as "a play for noises", for there seems to be no human or animal sound missing from her over-animated, over-acted, over-crowded and over-directed rendering of this funny, compassionate and poetic work.

There are times when the director's sympathy and imagination are in tune with those of the playwright. But dear Lord, those are few enough, and vanish altogether under the impact of misreadings such as when the otherwise capable Regina Crowley offers Pegeen Mike instead of Rosie Probert.

There are more than 70 characters, or voices, in this evocation of a small town in Wales on a single Spring day, and it must be more difficult to orchestrate a large cast than a small one.

It is understandable, although not necessarily forgivable, that one or other of the players might limp out of line here and there, especially as they have been given so much to do, forming groups and then breaking them, nodding and ticking (a chorus for clock-mad Lord Cutglass has a risable choreography of spasms) and waving shawls, scrubbing floors, opening letters and singing out of time with a recorded song.

Nothing is suggested, everything is shown, and no mood is so gentle it cannot be thunderously emphasised. Obviously the company has an affection for the marvellous words even if it loses quite a few of them, but the players are working against a tidal wave of sound from elsewhere. Mention a baby and a baby cries, hens and a frenzied hen-run crackles into the air, the Rev Eli Jenkins's morning service is drowned by the tsunami of a violin solo, herring gulls scream over the sonorous wash of the sea. Even mimed actions are given squeaks and squeals, and Nogood Boyo, fishing for corsets, has his brief dream of a geisha girl enhanced by what passes for geisha music.

It is all disruptive and desperately irritating, especially as Conor Tallon, Hugh Moynihan, Paul Creighton and Regina Crowley carry the narrative well; the feeling is that their trained and mellow voices should have been allowed get on with it. Mary Leland

Runs until Nov 11

Belfast Festival: The History Boys, Grand Opera House

The History Boys . . . such an apparently inconspicuous little title for a big, free-flowing, wide ranging play of ideas. Since Alan Bennett's funny, wise, provocative examination of the gulf between education and culture was premiered by the National Theatre in May 2004, it has won so many awards and plaudits that reviews now seem almost superfluous. But to see Simon Cox's recreation of Nicholas Hytner's National production on tour - and particularly in Ireland - is to view it in a slightly different light.

The setting is a boys' grammar school in the writer's native north of England; the time is the 1980s; the political context is Thatcher's Britain, where the education system is sinking under the weight of league tables.

In this group of sixth-form boys of varying intelligence and social/ethnic backgrounds, their over-anxious headmaster (William Chubb) obsessed with adding Oxbridge success to the school profile, a sole female teacher (Isla Blair) rowing against the tide of chauvinism, a keen young part-timer (Orlando Wells) brought in to mould the boys into exam success and a gentle, elderly English teacher (Stephen Moore), who believes that words alone are "certain good", Bennett has created a microcosm, which, with added distance, is strikingly English in tone and content.

It is breathtaking to absorb the fluent ebb and flow of language, the quaint, arch humour, the subtly barbed political point-scoring and the shaping of a complete little world of true-to-life characters. Moore is an engagingly warm, eccentric Hector, a brilliant but batty teacher, who inspires the boys to unleash their imaginations, while also allowing him the occasional benign grope around their trouser fronts. Wells is all buttoned-up propriety as Irwin, Hector's nemesis, a closet homosexual, whose entire focus is on exam technique - the wrong end of the stick is the right end of the stick, if it gets top marks.

And among the excellent ensemble of young actors, Steven Webb is outstanding as Posner, small, intellectual, Jewish, gay and hopelessly hung up on Ben Barnes's devilishly handsome, promiscuous Dakin. All life is indeed here and, as a final flourish, Bennett even manages a glimpse of the contrasting futures, which are already forming in this academic hothouse. Jane Coyle

Runs until Sat

We Are Scientists, Ambassador, Dublin

Keith Murray, lead singer, guitarist and chief scientist of this art-pop Brooklyn trio, has a request: he would like the audience to get violent. But could we also remain peaceable? In fact, he suggests, if we have plastic knives, maybe we could just wave them in the air? This seems like an appropriate compromise to make for a band that is equal parts thrilling and zany, whose music hovers constantly between delirious melody and deleterious racket.

Connoisseurs of irony, or those with a very high threshold for goofiness, may appreciate a rock group who take to the stage against the unctuous strains of Phil Collins's Against All Odds (and proceed to play it), but the appeal of the trio's spikier guitar riffs, bouncing bass grooves and pounding disco stomps is considerably less exclusive.

Why their star is not as high as Franz Ferdinand's or The Killers' - with whom they are most frequently compared - is beyond me, particularly when the infectious post-punk of WAS tends to burn twice as bright. Cash Cow and Worth the Wait are tense confections, where busy guitar lines wrestle with restless hi-hats, where the music feels like a frenzy in a tight corner.

Their best song, Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt adeptly exploits this controlled explosion; not just in its lurches from infectious disco rhythm to an air-raid siren guitar line, but also because its chorus fidgets with sexual tension: "My body is your body/I won't tell anybody/If you wanna use my body."

Much is made of the group's "nerd" chic, something happily bolstered by the fact that their bassist Chris Cain, a man in his 20s, has seen fit to cultivate a thick moustache. But their music is something cooler and cannier. Though there will be last-night-of-the-tour high jinks during the encore (a beautifully over-emoted karaoke version of Boyz II Men's End of the Road), it is the nervy excitement of Can't Lose, It's A Hit and The Great Escape that prove that the group's creative laboratory is a place of earnest endeavour, where men of science experiment with serious fun. Peter Crawley