Events reviewed by Irish Times writers include The Waiting Room in Belfast.

The Waiting Room, Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast

Down the years, Kabosh Theatre Company has taken its audiences on many intriguing journeys. They have been locked into the caverns beneath the River Lagan, rained upon in the then-unfinished Odyssey Pavilion, and trampled upon by a herd of rhinos. The latest adventure is a big secret. It involves boarding a bus at the Old Museum, being handed letters in sealed brown envelopes and being ferried to one of the city's most impressive and atmospheric buildings, there to witness the unfolding of a quirky, colourful tale.

The unnamed cast beckon their unsuspecting visitors into an inviting enclosed world, where each tiny space is meticulously dressed with a tantalising selection of knick-knacks and ornaments. Each represents an individual home or refuge in a small sleepy village, deep in rural France.

It is a place where time has, literally, stood still. While practically the entire male population has gone to serve in the euphemistically-named "Great War" raging far away in their beautiful country, the women remain behind to gossip and dream and squabble and fret - and quietly go off their heads.

The unexpected - and bizarre - arrival of a man from another time and place sets the cat among the pigeons, but it takes the clear-sighted vision of a local child to plot the path to a freedom of sorts. There can be nothing but praise for the combined efforts of director Karl Wallace and the cast, who have devised this sometimes joyous, sometimes plaintive hour-long promenade fable, which gently probes important issues concerning war, community, territory and human frailty. - Jane Coyle

At the Old Museum until tomorrow; Waterside Theatre, Derry Apr 4 and 5

McDonagh/O'Conor, John Field Room (NCH)

Fauré - Elégie. Brahms - Cello Sonata in F Op 99. Beethoven - Cello Sonata in A Op 69. Popper - Hungarian Rhapsody

Ailbhe McDonagh is a pianist as well as a cellist, and that breadth of experience showed in this recital. Her piano teacher is John O'Conor, whose pianism in this concert complemented cello playing full of musical intelligence, even when, in one item, technique was over-stretched.

Shaping things coherently, with as much awareness of the piano part as of the solo line, was one of the recital's strengths. The opening work, Fauré's Elégie, was restrained, evenly paced and impeccable in effortless tone and long-line phrasing. It was no surprise to hear the tuneful virtuosity of the final item, Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody, delivered with aplomb.

Brahms's Cello Sonata in F Op 99 presents serious challenges. McDonagh knew how to shape this piece faithfully, from the spasmodic outbursts of the first movement to the sustained cantabile of the slow movement. However, everything felt on the edge. Tone was sometimes lost, especially in low-pitched, rapid playing; and the tension between piano and cello - always a central feature of this work - too often ended up with the piano victorious, and not always because O'Conor's playing was so forward. In this work it cannot be otherwise.

The contrast with Beethoven's Sonata in A Op 69 was striking. Here McDonagh's abilities with tone and phrase, including a remarkable manipulation of vibrato, were perfectly suited to this extraordinary piece. As in the Fauré and Popper, she did not milk the music for expression. She let it speak. And because she understood the way in which cello and piano relate, it spoke eloquently.

I have heard several performances of this piece over the past 30 years or so, some of them by famous cellists; but this one, by a cellist in her early 20s, was the most musically complete and satisfying. - Martin Adams