The Dublin Fringe Festival reviewed

Arabian Night *

Goethe Institute

Group X's production of Roland Schimmelpfennig's absurdist fantasy, Arabian Night, is a frustrating endurance test. Instead of approaching the story - five occupants of an apartment block go off the deep end when the water goes missing between floors seven and 10 - with a literal representation, Group X stages (or un-stages) the play like a live radio drama. Audience members are blindfolded, seated on bean bags or lying on yoga mats, while the cast occupy the centre of the room with their microphones and Foley sound effects.

During a brief priming session before the production begins, the audience is encouraged to contemplate a series of random props, which presumably are designed to provide visual aids to the imagined world that the audience is asked to conjure as Arabian Night unfolds. However, despite decent "performances", the effect is soporific rather than inspiring: this is one Arabian Night I'd rather sleep through. Until Sept 18 SARA KEATING

Eejit of Love *

Samuel Beckett Theatre

A wise old axiom says that musicals are for people who like neither music nor theatre. Sadly, there's little about Little Dark Star's Eejit of Love to contradict that cutting saw. In a show that ostensibly sets out to castigate the cult of celebrity and its corrupt bedfellow, manufactured star-finding TV circuses such as X Factor, author Jody Trehy's scenario is even more cliched than the subject it wants to critique.

It features cringe-inducing country bumpkin sweetheart types Billy and Eileen, who dream of fame; a Mephistophelian impresario by the name of Pete Popalypse; and an angel lazily and unfairly called St Bono, who embodies a confused mixture of rock'n'roll and country music. Ironically, the tunes that represent evil artificial music are infinitely superior to the allegedly honest but lame, ear-numbingly bland numbers that are supposed to be redemptive. Farcical and mawkish, Eejit of Love fails to understand that you don't satirise what is already a parody.

Until Sun PATRICK BRENNAN

The Silhouette Old Time Mystery Radio Show ***

Spiegeltent

Duke Special - in puppet and human form - was the ideal host for an ambitious vaudeville-inspired evening that transported the audience back to early 20th-century Paris. A constant rotation of performers played on the background radio-noir story involving the pursuit of the murderous Eraser by detective Charles Silhouette.

The Irish and international singers, including Beth Rowley, Gavin Friday, Camille O'Sullivan and a 20-piece choir, covered artists ranging from Cole Porter to Michael Jackson, with the songs carrying a (sometimes tenuous) theme of mystery. Paul Currie was a show-stealer with his comic turns while DJ78 soundtracked the interludes with his shellac-spinning gramophone. Any cracks that appeared due to lack of rehearsal were covered up by the Duke's good-natured wit. As the curfew brought an early end to the evening, there was sufficient evidence to suggest we had witnessed our very own Belle Époque. Show concluded BRIAN KEANE