Golden October

The Dublin Theatre Festival (October 5th-18th) is launching its programme on Tuesday, but some crumbs of information have already fallen from its table. And they are delicious. The Gate's offering is a new version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya by Brian Friel. Friel has a special relationship with the work of Chekhov - he adapted Three Sisters for the Gate - and he is working in quite a long tradition of new Irish versions of Russian plays, although he has not made translation of the work from Russia to Ireland, which Kilroy effected in The Seagull.

The show will be directed by Ben Barnes, who will have a particularly busy festival. He is bringing Jim Nolan's hugely acclaimed show for Red Kettle, The Salvage Shop, to the Gaiety, which will involve re-rehearsal and fine-tuning. The play, which stars Niall Toibin, is a touching and humourous portrayal of a community trying to save itself by bringing Pavarotti to town for a grand concert.

The Abbey's programme is already public: Marina Carr's new play The Bog of Cats, about a woman clinging to her identity on the edge of a bog, is reputed to be dark and wonderful, while Michael Harding's "surreal" Amazing Grace makes a concertina of time in its exploration of 1798 and its contemporary relevance.

One of the gems of the international programme is what seems to be an extraordinary Italian work called Giulio Cesare, which uses the figure of Julius Caesar, and Shakespeare's play, to explore rhetoric - and in such graphically anatomical terms that even in hardened Amsterdam, some people walked out. Rhetoric is such a powerful political tool in Italy, right through Mussolini to Berlusconi, that it is no wonder the show, presented by Societas Raffaello Sanzio, has proved so politically contentious, and has provoked such a reaction at Avignon.