All the world's on stage

Oyster

Olympia Theatre

Inbal Pinto and her dance company opened the Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival with Oyster, which in turn opened up the world of theatre to reveal more grit than pearls. It was set before a frame outlined in naked light bulbs, like a dressing-room mirror, as was the proscenium arch, also suggesting fairground lights. Within the frame, a booth was sometimes wheeled on, in which we saw satirical portrayals of characters from fairground peep shows or freak shows. Circus acrobats and clowns, sick comics and depraved mime artists from 1930s German cabaret, simultaneous dancers and bored corset-clad chorus girls from 1920s English music halls, violent apache dancers and suggestive leg shows of "naughty French" revue, Victorian melodrama and the pathos and comedy of Chaplinesque love scenes followed each other in exaggeration and rapid succession, revealing influences that created Samuel Beckett's tragically comic tramps.

It was both sad and funny, savage and witty, nostalgic and pathetic, evoking all the tawdry glitter, respectable vulgarity, hard work and short cuts of show business, which is never as easy or as much fun as it looks. It was rapturously received by the first-night audience, though I doubt if the words "lovely" and "beautiful" on so many lips were appropriate. But Pinto and director Avshalom Pollak, responsible also for the ironically romantic soundtrack and between them designing sets and costumes, deserve the greatest praise for creating something so original, absorbing and thought-provoking.

Carolyn Swift

Ends tonight

Guess Who's Coming For The Dinner

Andrews Lane Theatre

Roddy Doyle's new play acknowledges some prompting by a 1960s film with a similar title, but it need not have bothered. This work is new, set in today's Dublin and furnished with issues and characters hot off a very topical griddle. Larry Linnane lives contentedly with his wife and family - three girls, one boy - in a small house in working-class Artane. He is a decent, liberal man without a trace of racism. In soccer, he sees skills, not skin, and his musical tastes run to Phil Lynott - great - as opposed to Neil Diamond - absolute shite. But one day, his eldest daughter drops a bombshell. She has been seeing a Nigerian asylum-seeker, and his untutored reaction astounds him. He has visions of an AIDS-riddled continent, of vague barbarities threatening his girl, and loses the plot. Wife Mona, a safe pair of hands, steadies the family boat by inviting the young man, Ben, to dinner. During the meal, Larry has his ups and downs, at one point ludicrously apologising to Ben on behalf of the Irish people, at another ordering him out of the house. But it all ends well, and Larry is left to bask in the warm aftermath of his hospitality.

The story is a gentle enough take on a serious social problem, but I will not commit the error of commenting on the play for what it is not. What it is amounts to a charming comedy with a heart, and with wholly persuasive characters and dialogue. It made me wish it were considerably longer than its 75 minutes, but it is, within that time span, a complete creation. Gary Cooke, Barbara Bergin, Janet Moran and Maynard Eziashi are delightful, funny and moving by turns, and the author gives the family trio more to do in clever interpolations of the other children - a neat use of theatre. Robert Ballagh's set underpins the scenes, and Bβirbre N∅ Chaoimh directs with the right feeling for her subject and subjects. A nice one.

Gerry Colgan

Runs until October 13th

Minuit

The Ark

The kids would probably tell me I'm not watching enough MTV; all the same, I was startled to see this hour of dance theatre, featuring some rather eroticised passages, being marketed for children aged eight and up in the theatre festival's children's season. To sex, add death, and you've got the themes of this African-flavoured piece more or less wrapped up. It's good sex, and awful death, and they mix strikingly - the thrashing last throes of BalakΘ fling his lover, Sona, across the stage - and the only objection to such themes as entertainment for kids might be that the subjects are treated seriously here, rather than flippantly, as in so much children's television. The children around me seemed absorbed by the physical and emotional intensity and deep nocturnal atmosphere of this performance, by the French Compagnie James CarlΘs. As for the narrative, the dancers spoke a few words of explanation in heavily accented English - happily, they were not strictly necessary to the enjoyment of the show.

Several pair and ensemble sequences captured the languor and joy of love, and such was the variety and energy on display that it was shocking to see only five dancers take the curtain call. Devised by choreographer Keita Fodeba in 1948, Minuit arguably presents its African story material, and Afro-French bodies, as rather old-fashioned exotica. Upstage-right at various intervals there appears a succubus, a primitive and sexually funky female figure, toying with African musical instruments and votive figures, bringing doom to the lovers. Perhaps the young audience will need more explanation of such a sexual-racial archetype than they will of mere sex and death.

Harry Browne

Runs until Friday

Fintan O'Toole will review the plays in the Abbey's Tom Murphy season on Friday's arts page