A selection of reviews by Irish Timeswriters

Sleeping Beauty, The Helix, Dublin

The first sight of the fairy gives it away that this version of the children's classic is not going to be all sweetness and light.

Goody is dressed in mud-coloured rags instead of the girly pink, her wings are sagging, she farts rather a lot and she lives in a dark, thorny wood which is home to a marauding ogre.

In a fit of pique with the snooty queen, she casts a spell that sends Beauty (Kelly Shatter) to sleep for 100 years and as every child brought up on the Disney version of Charles Perrault's 17th-century fairy tale knows, it's a spell that can only be broken by a prince's kiss.

A remorseful Goody, played with verve and a wicked sense of fun by Barbara Brennan, sets out to find a prince but it's not easy. The first two gormless specimens are gobbled by the fearsome ogre (Karl Shiels) but eventually one (an engagingly funny Rory Nolan) comes along who is a match for him, so that by end of the first half, Beauty is awake and a happy-ever-after ending is in sight. But here's where the grotesquely comic subplot in Rufus Norris's version takes over.

Adults looking back on the fairytales they were told as children are often horrified by the gruesome subtext bubbling underneath these apparently simple stories and Norris rummages around in some very dark corners indeed to create his version of what happened next.

At the start of the first half, Beauty, now with twin babies, is introduced to the mother of all mother-in-laws. Played with a superb mixture of high comedy and pure evil by Mal White, she's an ogre who rather fancies eating the babies.

Continuing the theme of the inability of parents to truly protect their children, Beauty loses the twins and there's a most stomach-churning scene where the ogre gorges on dishes she thinks are the cooked babies.

We, however, thanks to some truly comical business involving a talking-table (a hilarious Fergal McElherron) know that the babies are safe - this is a children's show after all - and in the end, goodness is restored and all is put right.

This is a top-notch production with an elaborate, sophisticated set by Paul Wills, lighting by Tina MacHugh, who pulls off the difficult task of building a mood of foreboding, and direction by Róisín McBrinn.

It's a joint production between Landmark Productions and the Helix, and while children over six will love all the comic business and even the flesh-eating ogres, as well as being intrigued by a new variation on a story they know so well, it might be best to leave very little ones at home.

•Runs at various dates and times until Jan 7, 2007, check with venue for details

Bernice Harrison

Williams, Rao, Collins, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Schumann - Sonata No 1 in A minor; 5 Stücke im Volkston Op 102; Fantasiestücke Op 88

The Schumann anniversary year - he died 150 years ago in 1856 - has struggled for space against 2006's predominant celebrations, those marking Mozart's birth in 1756. So it was nice that this free concert featured an all-Schumann programme. Adding to the appeal of the occasion, and to the sense of homage, was that cellist Arun Rao had provided not so much a programme note as an actual essay - ideal for the Hugh Lane audience which arrives early to secure favourite seats.

Rao's article not only discussed the pieces but set the composer's life and work in context, pointing out how Schumann had once been avant-garde with his "exalted moods" and "introspective outbursts". Both figure in the A minor Violin Sonata whose nearly relentless intensity was matched by the well-paired emotional dialogue between violinist Gillian Williams and Dearbhla Collins on the roiling piano part conceived as the equal partner. The playing seemed to bear out Schumann's assertion that he wrote it - in less than a week - when he was "very angry with certain people".

After a work allowing so little repose, the ensuing 5 Stücke im Volkston ("5 Pieces in Folkstyle")for cello and piano brought a welcome contrast. That said, internal contrast is a bit scarce, with the relative homogeneity of the central pieces perhaps explaining why the set doesn't surface more often. Still, it was a good opportunity to hear cellist Rao's clear-voiced playing in what was a loving performance.

Having played separately, real-life partners Williams and Rao joined forces with Collins to close with the four FantasiestückeOp 88. More forgiving than the sonata and more varied than the folk-pieces, the set contains a gem in the third movement Duett, whose gradual melding of imitation into tandem-playing was the concert's highlight. Michael Dungan

RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet, ConTempo String Quartet, National Gallery, Dublin

Enescu - Octet. Shostakovich - Two Pieces Op 11. Mendelssohn - Octet

The repertoire for string octet is tiny by comparison with the repertoire for string quartet. But, put two quartets together and you get an octet, and the irresistible temptation of doing just that now finds the combined RTÉ Vanbrugh and ConTempo Quartets on tour around Ireland.

The great masterpiece of the repertoire for eight string players is the teenage Mendelssohn's Octet in E flat, a work of jaw-dropping precocity, and the tour placed it as the climax of a programme in which the preceding works were also written by a teenager. George Enescu completed his Octet in C, Op 7, in 1900, a year before he wrote his most famous work, an orchestral rhapsody steeped in Romanian flavour. The octet could hardly be more different. It's epic in scale and so melodically prolix it's almost like a shaggy dog story that defers its resolution for a record length of time.

The music is fired by a kind of Brahmsian thrust, and this performance was extremely highly charged, perhaps too much so. At times it was as if the musicians wanted to break through some ceiling or barrier of intensity that simply wouldn't yield to even their most strenuous efforts. Yet the sense of something exceptional at work in the music was unmissable in this performance.

The compositional muscle-flexing of the young Shostakovich in his Two Pieces, Op 11, showed all the forward-looking tendencies that were absent from the two early orchestral scherzos played by the RTÉ NSO on Friday. Here, and in the Mendelssohn, with its extraordinary marriage of chamber size with almost orchestral sonority, the players not only had a field day, but showed tighter expressive discipline than in the Enescu.

•Tours to Waterford (Thur) and Bray (Fri)

Michael Dervan