Arts Reviews

Eventually, Pete Doherty disappears from view. It becomes impossible to count the number of people who have clambered onstage to engulf him in adulation, in chaos.

At the risk of understatement, I have never seen anything like this. In my life. Ever.

This gig - thrilling, ridiculous, hilarious and frightening, often at the same moment - must count as a relatively uneventful day in the grim walking soap opera that is Doherty.

Dangerously good-looking, legendarily volatile, brilliantly prolific and dependent on various drugs (he has been off crack cocaine for over two weeks, he recently crowed), Doherty is, of course, currently the most revered man in rock.

The first remarkable thing about this concert is that it happened at all. When Doherty failed to perform in Aberdeen ("I had an overdose on the bus," he explained) fans were arrested in the ensuing riot. The next remarkable thing is that the sold-out crowd, churning around with an uncontrollable seasick swirl, are still able to throw gifts to him.

Rosary beads hit him in the face ("Facking 'ell", he reels). He puts them on. A bra lands on a mic stand. Later Doherty puts that on too. Somebody's passport is donated. Doherty's own was confiscated last month. A carton of cranberry juice appears. Doherty raises a toast.

This is idolatry.

The other remarkable thing, which is very easily overlooked in the mêlée, is the music. Banned from The Libertines until he cleans up his act (don't hold your breath), Doherty is now threatening to eclipse his more famous group with his "denial band".

Jagged and jaunty pop that harks back to The Kinks and faces towards a new beginning, songs such as F*** Forever, Killamangiro and the reclaimed Libertines number What Katie Did hint at a bright future - if Doherty can keep himself out of trouble.

If the Village is anything to go by, this looks unlikely. After his first dive into the throng Doherty is fished back, then sweetly asks: "Is everybody happy?" Later he offers a helping hand to every potential stage invader. "C'mon," Doherty urges over the heads of his security guards. "There's only three of them."

In the end a mountainous security guard with an inscrutable expression becomes a stepping stone for the swarm that invades the stage. A roadie brandishes a microphone stand to repulse the kids. The venue is evacuated.

If half of what you read about Doherty is true, there's only one way that this story will end. Tonight there is no encore. If his young worshippers continue to lionise Doherty for his crazy explosiveness, there never will be. - Peter Crawley

Cinderella

Waterfront Hall, Belfast

Pass by the terracing outside the Waterfront on any weekend, summer or winter, and you can't miss the city's skating fraternity, out in force. They are a picturesque bunch, with their urban-chic clothes, their own brand of music and their impenetrable street talk.

The Waterfront is fortunate in having recently appointed to its staff one of the North's most experienced theatre practitioners, former Lyric and Tinderbox artistic director Simon Magill, who has cleverly brought the characters from the world outside right into the heart of the venue's first home-grown Christmas show.

Pantomimes don't come much more traditional than Cinderella, and, within Stuart Marshall's sugar-coated set, Magill has retained much that is familiar and treasured while dispensing with some favourite characters and scenes. You'll find no pumpkins, white mice, sparkling coach or cute ponies.

Instead we are pitched into a thoroughly modern domestic situation, where a rich, gullible older man (Chris Robinson's Lord Lagan) falls for the dubious wiles of a younger woman (Sharon Morwood's shrilly poisonous stepmother). She arrives at his stately home with a mountain of baggage - the hideous siblings Maxi and Mini, played with tremendous pizzazz by those giants of the Christmas stage Sean Kearns and Christina Nelson.

Without so much as a by your leave they overturn the blissful existence of the venerable lord's beloved daughter, prettily sung by Alana Kerr, while dispensing enough salty jokes to keep the adults in the audience chuckling.

Packy Lee is a bundle of energy as the eternally cheerful Buttons, who gets all the kids happily yelling their heads off. The arrival of Paul Kelly's good-looking Sk8erboi Prince kicks Liz Keller's great original music up a gear and unleashes the independent woman lurking behind Cinderella's mousy exterior.

While the meshing of ancient and modern occasionally feels as tricky a fit as the glass slipper, it is thoroughly refreshing to see such an appropriate new take on an evergreen old story. - Jane Coyle

Runs until January 15th

The Zutons

Ambassador, Dublin

All good things come to those who wait. Although this rescheduled gig may have come rather late in the day - and although, when the group eventually arrived in Dublin, it was minus a member - the Liverpool psychedelics complete this year's bumper crop of new bands magnificently.

A huge backdrop reinforces the Merseysiders' theme of B-movie apocalypse: meteors crashing down, shadowy figures lurching up from the debris, their dimensions mutated. Curly of hair and pointy of shoe, the four Zutons emerge to a hero's welcome, then play a song about zombies. In dance halls.

"This is just a night in the city of culture," wails David McCabe as biblically proportioned beats engulf him. "But everyone's whacked and looks like vultures." Official anthem for Cork 2005, anyone?

They apologise for the absence of Abi Harding, whose current sinusitis is at odds with her saxophone playing.

McCabe then introduces Pressure Point as "a song about bad jobs", in a Scouse accent so thick and adenoidal one wonders how anyone recognised Harding's condition. "I'm not slagging bad jobs, honest," McCabe insists, as though the Bad Jobs Defence Union might take a defamation case against him.

Though sometimes uncomfortably similar to fellow Liverpudlian psychedelics (and labelmates) The Coral, the Zutons thrive on a mix of warm familiarity and sudden, exhilarating action - as though your school bus had strayed into a high-speed chase.

There are wistful and whimsical folk tunes (the new single Confusion), then the punishing beats and stomping rhythms of the new song Weekend Strut.

On a towering You Will You Won't, then the frenetic Don't Ever Think (Too Much), they simply bowl you over. These songs are huge but never bombastic, riding the inclusivity of a mantra or the demotic stomp of a terrace chant.

Whether they evolve into major players of a burgeoning genre or remain offbeat cheerleaders of musical pandemonium, you will want to be on their team.- Peter Crawley