Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events.

Hue & Cry, Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin

There is, as the scriptures put it, a time to mourn and a time to dance. With the ignominious death of Damian's father, now would seem like a good opportunity for the former. But as Karl Shiels moves uneasily through the prim living room of his family home, eyes darting and weight shifting, it is clear that he has become a stranger to both the place and to his emotions.

He is agitated and uncomfortable, but not grieving.

The mastery of Shiels's performance in Deirdre Kinahan's intriguing new play for Tall Tales is his ability to give expression to the inexpressive. Joined by Will O'Connell's Kevin, a one-time friend, now choreographer of contemporary dance, Shiels reminds you that an actor's job is not to show feelings, but usually to conceal them.

If there's something a little neat in Kinahan's pairing, representing a schismatic double act of north and south Dublin and a dialogue between the emotionally inarticulate, shell-suited Damian and the emotionally fluent, sharp-suited Kevin, Hue & Cry carries off the conceit with this writer's deft naturalism and subtle exposition.

Kinahan writes comedy in a minor key, and nothing in her plot could fail to raise a wistful smile: Damian borrows Kevin's words "reeling" and "tense" as though they are new discoveries to talk about the disintegration of his family, his poor luck with employment and drugs, and the far-worse fate of his football team. When O'Connell (managing the tricky task of making a patronising character seem helplessly well-meaning) confesses that contemporary dance has a small following, Shiels makes a grim association: "Like Rovers." The sad decline of the Hoops may not quite unlock the floodgates to Damian's bereavement, but it's a start, and this is where Kinahan and director David Horan have a serious challenge: to express grief and even catharsis within the folds of comedy. Even with a design as sensitive to the confines of Bewley's Café Theatre as Steve Neale's, this is a lot to cram into a lunchtime.

Re-enacting his last dance production, Grief, based on the clothes-shredding Jewish mourning ritual keriyah (presumably Irish caoining doesn't inspire his choreographic mind), Kevin performs a dance of despair and aggression.

Choreographed by Muirne Bloomer and executed with great commitment by O'Connell, the dance works as comedy - how could it not? - but is extended so long that Horan bravely tries to bleed the humour from it.

The play itself may not be breaking any of Kinahan's established moulds, but the discrete ambition of this sequence and its quietly devastating follow-up, is to use drama as a vehicle for transformation, exaltation and emotional release. A private hesitant wake becomes a shared celebration. Or as Damian puts it, perfectly: "Alright, giz a go." - Peter Crawley

Runs until July 7th

Devo, Vicar Street, Dublin

Not many American new wave bands of the mid to late 1970s operated upon a philosophical principle of devolution. Yet Ohio act Devo based part of their working aesthetic on the theory that mankind, rather than progressing, was actually sliding down a negative curve. But how to present such an aesthetic in pop music terms without coming across as either pompous, pretentious or naive? Simple - the band presented their music in quite basic forms; robotic and mechanical overtones were underpinned by electro-rock therapy. It's no wonder than Brian Eno was taken on board to produce Devo's debut album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!

Much has changed since Devo appeared on British television wearing flower pots on their heads; their theories of devolution in many areas have proven to be correct (Big Brother, anyone?) but why on earth would a bunch of middle-aged men - all of whom have become quite successful in their distinct and separate areas of expertise, with Mark Mothersbaugh perhaps the most famous through his soundtrack work on the likes of The Rugrats animated series and movies such as The Royal Tenenbaums - reform and play on stage wearing yellow boiler suits and terracotta-coloured plastic flower-pot hats? It's a tricky question to pose as much as answer; certainly, Devo look ridiculous, but the music more than makes up for it. It was back in the day and still is a curious hybrid of highly proficient electronic swathes and jerky rhythmic stabs. It's best exemplified on tracks such as Mongoloid, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Secret Agent Man, Uncontrollable Urge, Whip It and Freedom of Choice, all of which threaten to come apart due to excessive stop-start quirkiness but manage to stay together due to the principles of canny song craft and daft presentation.

Viewed as a lab-coated novelty act by many in the late 1970s, it's important to note that acts such as Nirvana and Soundgarden namechecked Devo as being a significant influence. Don't bet against new material being unleashed in the near future. Devolution, as we are seeing on a daily basis, is hardly going to go away just yet. - Tony Clayton-Lea

The Cleansing of Constance Brown, Granary Theatre Drama Laboratory, Cork

Without programmes, credits or attributions to hand, it is impossible to acknowledge the creative personalities behind The Cleansing of Constance Brown, except to indicate that the show itself comes from Stan's Cafe. Visiting Cork as part of the Midsummer Festival, it is an example of just what a worthwhile festival should offer - visually delightful, imaginatively intriguing and resonant, not merely in its magnetic and referential soundscape by anonymous, but in its choreography, also by anonymous.

Perhaps in fact, anonymity is the key to this reflection on the passages and passageways of time; the setting is a corridor of telescopic quality which lengthens or contracts according to the events taking place in locations identified - again according to events - as a courtroom, hospital corridor, tenement or flat complex, office block or hotel. Rooms open off the corridor, but nothing is shown of what happens in those spaces; it is only the passage that matters, releasing wordless signals for Abu Ghraib or the Holocaust or the court of Elizabeth I or, amid a blizzard of shredding, corporate or political corruption.

Everyone is coming from somewhere and going somewhere else; this is life as traffic, fast moving or jammed or caught in some ominous shadow. Lighting by anonymous casts oblique flags of bright and dark along the hallway and deepens the perspective; costumes by anonymous heighten the symbolism and also provide some of the connective tissue which suggests - and it is all suggestion - sequences or linkages that accumulate to a debatable coherence.

The cleansing, when it happens, may or may not have something to do with someone called Constance Brown, but as an act of purification it changes from floor-mopping to graffiti-scrubbing, from fumigation to exorcism. Whether Constance Brown (played by Anonymous) is its victim or its perpetrator, doesn't matter at all: history can never be cleaned away. Because of its size the audience, restricted to 20 people, can't be anonymous and shares a feeling that it's good to be together for this event.

You can meet the cast and creative team today at the Granary at 4pm. - Mary Leland

Runs to June 30th