A fringe full of laughs

Puppetry Of The Penis

Olympia Theatre

'Genital origami" is how Australians Stephen Harris and Daniel Lewry describe their adult-only show. Fantastical as it sounds, this 50-minute show, which featured two naked men telling stories and making shapes from their most intimate parts, was a delight. The puppetry was via a camera that projected the vital body part onto a screen at the back of the stage. Without an iota of smut, the Aussies made sharp cultural banter the narrative. As for their extraordinary contortionist "dick tricks" - of Loch Ness monster, emu, kangaroo, windsurfer, Christ Church bell, hamburger, hot dog, squirrel, Eiffel Tower, G-string, snail and countless others - the man behind me muttered: "I'll never be bored on my own again."

Rosita Boland

Further Ted & Guests

HQ

This clearly wasn't going to be an evening of ground-breaking comedy, as Patrick McDonnell kick-started Further Ted with an audience-participation version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. From then on, McDonnell did his best to hold the show together, rescuing it from the blip of guest Tommy Nicholson's time on stage. Looking as if he had just lurched out of the nearest greasy spoon, Nicholson derived all his material from his claim that he was fat, ugly and from Navan. It was a relief when McDonnell and Joe Rooney bounded back on stage, with their dodgy wigs and cheap props, as the Pound Shop Boys. Their attempts to make that tricky transition from pound to euro was the closest they got to biting social satire.

Laura Smith

GAG

Arthouse

Inspired by the journal of a hostage and apocalyptic foretellings in Norse mythology, the Gotterdammerung Academic Glommerate (or GAG for short) embark on an experiment in hostage-taking in this seriously funny show. Created by the Metro-Boulot-Dodo company, GAG are a quartet of dubious academics in lab coats and balaclavas, who bungle their way through a series of tests on "Hostage A", or Tony, as he becomes known. The experiment is flawed from the outset, however, by the baffling ideologies and idiotic theories put forward by the group, played with wonderful timing and deadpan humour. With a surreal and macabre turn, the academics, having become bored with Tony's lack of response to his imprisonment, decide to introduce a series of activity days for their hostage. Tony is thrown a party, made to wear a pink tutu and play Twister. The only constant in the whole experiment is a steady supply of fine teas and scones.

A highly enjoyable moral tale of domination and ambition run amuck.

Laura Smith

Lost Songs

Cobalt Cafe

A heady camp aesthetic informed Camille O'Sullivan's insouciant cabaret travelogue. Billed a celebration of the oeuvre's forgotten classics, the show oozed satiric allure. It would perhaps be overstating the case to accuse O'Sullivan of striving for kitsch-flavoured melodrama. Nevertheless, many in attendance lapped up her vampish twirls with tongues lodged squarely in cheek.

Flitting between languorous music hall decadence and toffy accented vaudeville, O'Sullivan breathed astonishing vigour into her dusty material. She is a riotously physical performer, wielding feather boa, flapper hat and microphone with dazzling poise. O'Sullivan inhabits her songs, acquiring the bawdy manner of a Weimar fraulein or the waggish strut of a home counties debutante as appropriate.

Lesser known pieces from Brel, Kurt Weill, Piaf and Dietrich dominated a set by turns bewitching, hyper-kinetic and bewildering. A teasing reading of Friedrich Hollaender's The Kleptomaniac underscored O'Sullivan's comedic flair.

The burgeoning popularity of Brel tribute artist Jack L suggests cabaret is acquiring a widening fan base. O'Sullivan can count herself among the foremost exponents of this intoxicating vanquished art.

Edward Power

Lost Songs ended Sunday