Some shows are always going to split an audience in two, and one of the shows guaranteed to be divisive on this year’s Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival programme was Factory 2. Part of the festival’s Polish strand, the 7.5-hour epic is the creation of Krystian Lupa, and is inspired by Andy Warhol.

Sara Keating writes that the first act is “deliberately confrontational”, with actors hurling insults about place, and what follows is “gratuitous nudity, genital objectification, a lesbian orgy, inane repetition, and little evidence of any joy or passion among the collaborators of one of the most famous artistic collectives”. It seems designed to shock but instead Keating found it simply boring, and a few moments of genuine theatrical insight could not make up for a “deliberately indulgent and maddening performance”. Ouch.

Sara also went to Watt over the weekend, a condensed adaptation of Beckett’s 1945 novel. There are witty touches, she writes, but the play “remains an exercise in language games”. She adds: “Beckett was foremost a writer for the stage, and this adaptation might have done better to celebrate the theatricality of his novels.”

You can read these reviews in full, and more arts coverage, here.

And now with news of a different sort – tomorrow sees the arts pages coming over all rock and roll. A few weeks ago I set a handful of Irish Times critics a simple challenge – pick their ultimate five-piece rock band, with a few rules and regulations thrown in to keep things interesting. You can read their selections on tomorrow’s Arts pages and I’ll be throwing them up in brief here. But in the mean time, come up with your own band, and post them on the blog comments section tomorrow. Be warned though – no band will even get within a guitar solo of my crack musical outfit. Check back tomorrow to learn your lesson.