TUIGI Pirandello's play, first staged in 1921, was then, and remains, one of the most original, absorbing and stimulating dramas about the act of artistic creation.

A company of actors, in rehearsal of an imperfect play in which they are attempting to find out the "truth" of their characters, finds the rehearsal room invaded by those six characters, each of them insisting in their different individual terms on how the "reality" of their situations must be interpreted by the actors.

But their "reality", trapped forever within the incomplete text of their author, does not always coincide with what the director and the players want to create in performance. Yet they are the characters who must live forever re living the lives created by the author and interpreted by the actors long after author and performers are long dead.

Thomas Kilroy's new version of the work, as directed by John Crowley, is utterly faithful to the spirit and the content of the 75 year old original, yet has invested it with the spirit and language of the times we live in. Crowley's direction is meticulous in its attention to both the substance of Pirandello's six characters and to the illusion which is theatre.

Very clearly here we are dealing with two different layers of unreality the author's uneasy characters, unhappy in both the incompleteness of their creation - and with the situation in which they must be re created in perpetuity, and the director's and the actors' proposed re creation of them in a new production.

The performances are all excellent in terms of both individuality and ensemble and, in their characterisations, the lines are perfectly drawn between the "reality" of the author's six characters and the theatrical imperatives and egos which drive the director and his actors.

In all it is an absorbing and stimulating evening leavened with comedy and performed with distinction - an exploration and an entertainment not to be missed.

The short pieces by Grieg (arrangements of two of the composer's songs), and the finely crafted, if indulgently extended, set of variations by Arensky, sounded as though they might have been written for the very purpose of showing off the accomplishments of a string orchestra. The ICO's performances, directed from the first desk by artistic director Fionnuala Hunt, were finely drawn, and particularly impressive in the soft grained textures of some of the softest passages.