Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events.

Douglas, UO/Montgomery NCH, Dublin

Beethoven - Prometheus Overture

Brahms - Piano Concerto No 1

Dvôrák - Symphony No 6

Thursday's Ulster Orchestra concert at the National Concert Hall was an occasion of sadness and jubilation. The sadness stemmed from the absence of János Fürst, founder of the first Irish Chamber Orchestra, original leader of the Ulster Orchestra and one-time member and later principal conductor of the RTÉSO, who died last week.

Had he lived to conduct the concert, it would have been his first appearance in Dublin since he parted company with the RTÉSO back in 1989. Both the Dublin concert and its repeat in Belfast were dedicated to his memory.

The jubilation stemmed from the character of the music-making secured by the evening's stand-in, no less a figure than the orchestra's principal conductor elect, Kenneth Montgomery.

Montgomery, who takes a great interest in the developments of the period performance movement, is on one level like whizz-kid lighting designer, who can use the subtle skills of illumination to swell or diminish the apparent size or contents of a room.

The Ulster Orchestra is smaller in size and weight of tone than the RTÉSO, But Montgomery balanced his forces in such a way that he made this seem a consistent advantage.

He brought extra strength to the wind and an equality of dialogue between the various sections of the orchestra in Beethoven's Prometheus Overture. This was Beethoven with bite.

He allowed his players to thrust forcefully at Brahms's First Piano Concerto without overpowering the soloist, Barry Douglas. And the freedom of give-and-take in Dvôrák's Sixth Symphony was a consistent and joyful pleasure in this most pleasurable of symphonies.

Barry Douglas was both gentle and titanic in the Brahms, playing with an inspired freedom and managing to seem spiritually seamless with the orchestra, even when there were momentary lapses in co-ordination.

Brahms's First Piano Concerto is a young composer's concerto, and Douglas played it with all the fiery temperament of youth, even though in a couple of years' time he will be twice the age Brahms was when he composed it. - Michael Dervan

Sediments of an Ordinary Mind. Project, Space Upstairs

The former dance editor of New York's Village Voice, Elizabeth Zimmer, always advised dance critics to write out their shopping lists during performances. Her belief was that we should experience dance rather than try to make sense of it, so writing a simple list would distract eagerly analytical brains, allowing the movement to be felt viscerally. Apart from being downright practical in these time-starved days, it's an approach that could be tried by everyone attending Michael Klien's Sediments of an Ordinary Mind.

Watching his embodied streams of consciousness, audiences needn't worry about "getting it", but can set individual levels of glazed eyes. After Jeffrey Gormley's reflective text, four dancers, dressed in casual shades of olive green, blue, pink and orange, colour in the blank page of white dance floor lit with white lights. As always, the dancers devise the moment-to-moment moves to Klien's choreographic structure, which is robust enough to prevent things getting waffly. Individual traits emerge from the kaleidoscopic whole: Janyce Michellod looking through a hand clamped to the bridge of her nose, Nick Bryson's twittering fingers, Mark Carbery's bent knees, tightly folded wrists and rolling eyes, and Elena Giannotti's palm placed on her other wrist or arm. This gesture seemed infectious and reappeared on all the other bodies, along with buckling hips, twirling hands and low, wide crouches.

Ranging from softly plucked strings to seat-shuddering drones, Volkmar Klien's score offered gentle frames for the action, but it couldn't help the choreography's constantly dense texture, with all four dancers onstage for almost the entire work. There were some welcome moments of respite, like when both men were back-to-back on opposite sides of the stage co-ordinating knee bends or an early solo by Giannotti. With two banks of seating set on opposite sides of the dance floor, you could also watch about sixty sets of eyes precisely following individual dancers or blurrily gazing at everything. Klien probably doesn't care how we watch as long as each ordinary mind is transformed just a bit by the act of participation, in search of what he calls the social glue. - Michael Seaver

Runs until Jan 13th

Look Back in Anger, Andrews Lane Studio

There is often a certain nervousness attendant on viewing a revival of an acknowledged stage classic, particularly if there has been a long gap between showings. It is greatly to the credit of Serendipity Productions that, mere minutes into the action, the power of the original is again manifest here.

The play depends for its force on the absolute credibility of the five characters, led by working class Jimmy Porter. He is consumed with inchoate anger, resentments and cynicism. The flat he shares with his wife Alison and his Welsh friend Cliff is like a battleground in which he must be victor. Hell, here, is other people.

Jimmy's women know him only too well, know that he will never be successful or achieve anything worthwhile. He should, they believe, have been born in an earlier era when there were still noble causes to fight, rebellions to be led. But he will continue to earn his living from running his sweet stall. This does not extinguish his masculine appeal, even as he torments them.

The author is known to have put much autobiographical material into his play, and it shows. Jimmy (Joseph Paul Travers) is a fully developed creation. Alison (Fiona Brennan) tugs at the heartstrings from the lacerating abuse of the early scenes to her identity-collapse at the tragic ending. Cliff (Dafydd O'Shea) is the gentlest and truest of friends, as Jimmy recognises, too late as always. Actress Helena (Lynette Callaghan) can betray Alison, but cannot sustain her self-deceit. And veteran Eamon Rohan offers a cameo study of Alison's upper-crust father.

Director Paul Brennan guides the cut-and-thrust of these complex relationships with a sure hand, and the result is something quite special. - Gerry Colgan

Runs to Jan 27th