Irish Times writers give their verdict

Rufus Wainwright and the McGarrigle Sisters Vicar St, Dublin

Siobhán Long

With a name that suggests testosterone levels in excess, and a demeanour that would out-Quentin Quentin Crisp, Rufus Wainwright took possession of Vicar St's cavernous stage from the get-go. Unlike his previous visits here, where he's called most of the shots, this tour is very much a family affair. His mother and aunt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, were welcome and comfortable co-conspirators in what was a defiantly ragged mêlée, while his sister, Martha Wainwright, and cousin, Lily Lankin, simply added to the delicious raw edges of the evening. In fact, Martha was the real discovery of the night, her smokehouse vocals and belly-punch lyrics delivering an unexpectedly sharp counterpoint to Rufus's lush delivery.

This was a night that bore more kinship to a front-room singing session than a formal concert. As Kate pithily remarked, going on the road en famille presents its own challenges but it saves a fortune in therapy. And even the most cursory listen to the cross-generational vocals was proof positive of the evolutionary nature of music: the second generation of Rufus and Martha basked in a vocal confidence and nonchalance rarely enjoyed by their mother and aunt, whose vocals have always tended to tread in shallower waters, where their shared weakness could be kept to a minimum.

Rufus soared skywards, scaffolded by his clan, his voice as open and as formidable as a Verona diva's, particularly on the new material, Vibrate. Oddly though, his delivery metamorphosed into a nasal whine once he went solo, with nothing more than the drama of the piano to lean on.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle (or "the girls", as Rufus referred to them) were in playful mood, enjoying the banter and the memories of such heartsongs as Talk To Me Of Mendocino and I Eat Dinner.

Anna's daughter, Lily Lankin, lent nervy vocals to her grandmother's favourite, Alice Blue Gown, but Martha's chutzpah lifted the entire affair whenever it threatened to lapse into maudlin territory, particularly on her self-penned Don't Forget.

Five voices sharing the same gene pool, augmented by Geoff Hill's double bass, add up to one of the most organic gatherings to have been witnessed in Dublin in years. Despite the ragged set-list, with members leaving and returning to the stage with distracting frequency, this was a night to remember for its full-bodied emotions, for Rufus's unapologetically effete mustering of his troops, for their divine reading of Hard Times Come Again No More, and for the high-camp potential they finally delivered to Thomas Moore's ode to war and death, The Minstrel Boy.

The Beckett Project Granary Theatre, Cork

Mary Leland

Probably the most powerful attribute of The Beckett Project, as the second programme makes clear at the Granary, is its display of technique as an aid to interpretation. Lighting is the crucial factor in the four plays - Not I, Footfalls, Act Without Words 1 and Rockaby - as directed by Phillip Zarrilli, and although the dynamics and range of the human voice are exploited in three of the four the pauses, silences, and potential depths of significance are orchestrated through Kath Geraghty's lighting design.

Beckett can travel because these short plays need few props and next to no sets, but the Granary's insistence on clearing the auditorium after each piece (two intervals the first night, three the second) is alienating, given that the disturbance isn't justified by the on-stage changes. One result is that a number of the audience decide to stay outside altogether; while this can be accommodated almost as part of the experience, productions transcend such irritation.

The standards here are subtle but high. A scabrous lace dress catches the gothic miseries of Footfalls, where a mother's voice (enriched by the trance-like tones of Mairin Prendergast) measures the paces of her captive daughter (Bernie Cronin); a beseeching shade provokes a cataract of reminiscence from someone reduced to a mouth (Patricia Boyette and Regina Crowley) in Not I; Zarrilli himself is the man repeatedly offered and denied the essentials of life in Act Without Words 1; and the programme enters tenebrae with Patricia Boyette in the freighted silences of Rockaby.

These bleached lives mean something even if, despite the quality of the productions, we can't be too enchanted with their meaning. But at least, with Beckett, life's argument goes on.

Runs until Saturday (all seven plays on May 29th): 021-4904275