Putting Up a Front, Bank of Ireland Arts Centre

This show is based on the mordant, witty, and incisive poems from Carol Ann Duffy's collection The World's Wife, and features a dozen women actors playing the parts of the women who were partnered by or caused the downfall of iconic male characters such as Sisyphus, Freud, Samson, Poseidon, Orpheus, Faust, King Kong, the Kray twins and John the Baptist. While the poems are intriguing, and the production is glossy, there are two problems: the poems are not of themselves very dramatic, being more like commentaries; and the note of complaint about men, however funny, becomes monotonous - you can close the book and escape that tone, you can't in the theatre. The best performance, perhaps because it is of the most "dramatic" poem, is that of Neasa Power as the lovelorn romantic Queen Kong. The others are immensely stylish, but the script gives them little opportunity to really shine.