The fringe binge (Part 3)

Otis Lee Crenshaw - Andrews Lane Theatre

Otis Lee Crenshaw wears a cut-off black T-shirt, a confederate flag as a headscarf and tattoos on his muscular arms; he has a gravelly southern drawl. A white trash jailbird from Tennessee State Penitentiary, he is at the Fringe "as part of the Irish prison exchange programme". Crenshaw is also the creation of Rich Hall, a US comic not unfamiliar to Irish audiences. To guitar and double bass accompaniment, he plays keyboards and sings, weaving the character of Crenshaw, six times married, always to women called "Brenda". He sings mostly about lost love ("Do you remember? Well I don't. I was drunk"), and has a clever song built around Irish placenames.

The ditties are great fun, but it is the audience ("there were more people at my parole hearing") banter in between which shines - when things get difficult he warns that "it's a thin line between comedy and a hostage situation". Crenshaw, who is like a Jerry Springer guest set to music, is an original, entertaining character, so "slide your table over - a restraining order prevents me from getting any closer to you."

- Deirdre Falvey

At 8.30 p.m. until Saturday

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Samuel Beckett Theatre

When this work, adapted by Jocelyn Clarke for Blue Rain- coat Theatre Company, opened in March in Sligo, Gerry Colgan wrote: " . . . this version is essentially a stage reproduction of extracts from the book - but with a difference. That difference has largely to do with a kind of middle ground carved out by director Niall Henry, in which the plot is made to serve the talents of his actors as much as they are required to build a story. They are not stuffed into literal costumes - rabbit, mouse, whatever - but achieve their effects through a telling mix of mime and vocal variations . . .

"With fine acting, creative direction and the touchstone of a familiar, well-loved story, this 90-minutes long production flies a high flag."

8 p.m. until Saturday

If the dead could go shopping what would they buy? - Temple Bar Gallery

This provocative exploration of consumer society as manifest in Temple Bar, kicks off when psychedelic receptionist "Yoko", asks you a list of personal questions. Maurice launches the tour in which everything has its pricetag, first stop - Urbana. Naturally. A brilliant museum headset talks you through its consumer "artefacts", anthropologically. Inhabitants in a Temple Bar apartment you visit, discuss clearing their visa bill oblivious of an adjacent corpse. You are squashed into the back seat of a car which spins around a Dante-esque carpark. Chatty tour guides look after you in relays. One asks you to shut your eyes, and "think of your `inner guide' " (cheek!). People stare at you in the street.

Finally, having been led to a snug and handed a bun labelled "have your cake or"; an invoice for "FIVE MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE"; and Yoko's handwritten personality assessment, the morality play has "redeemed" you. If you buy it, that is.

- Deirdre Mulrooney

Every five minutes between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., until Sunday

Family Outing - Iveagh Gardens

Warming an audience up in a damp circus tent in a park in late September requires a lot of hard work. Ursula ("Martinez, that's just my stage name") Lee wants to persuade her audience that washing some of her family linen on stage will be a gripping entertainment. The trouble is that, personable though she is, she does not expand a sufficient amount of energy on winning the chilly punters over.

The basic premise is that real-life characters (i.e. her delightful Spanish mum and her true-grit-Brit Dad) can be trotted onstage to hilarious effect. She throws in a clever sequence with some wacky slides, has a video conference with a sibling, sends up the whole merchandising game, but at heart she gives us a slapdash evening which lacked a cutting edge. Not too lively at the Iveagh.

- Derek West

9 p.m. until Saturday

Wir Midder da Sea - Iveagh Gardens

This is an island piece (written and directed by Grace Barnes), redolent of the Shetlands, rich in Scottish accents, lyrical and bedded in vivid psychological insights into island life and "midders and bairns". It could almost be Synge, yet it addresses, in a contemporary manner, significant issues, particularly about relationships and taking control of one's destiny. A middle-aged mother (Anna Hepburn), a young wife (Marnie Baxter) and a woman of independence (Maureen Allan), all well cast, take turns at speaking of love, passion, despair and loss. Their tales are interwoven in the lightest of ways. The sea-setting (design by Elise Napier), using net, driftwood, shells and seaweed, is beautifully evocative. We hear waves and wind and talk of the legendary "silkie".

But somehow it is too detached and too careful. There is no interaction, there is an absence of creative tension. The sequence of monologues moves on automatic pilot, the cues become predictable and the use of dialect is occasionally self-conscious. The knitted costumes, though superbly crafted, are over-designed. The beauty remains a bit bogged down in its own solemnity.

- Derek West