Crow

The Drogheda-based youthful, creative and energetic Calipo Theatre Company has come to Dublin with much to offer and some things to learn.

They are presenting a stage work derived from a cult cartoon story and film and are bravely using a mixture of live action, loud music, enigmatic dances in masks and noisy video clips to deliver a tale of very old-fashioned violence and vengeance in which Eric Draven returns from his grave under the protection of a crow to avenge his and his fiancee's premature deaths at the hands of a New York badlands drugs gang a year earlier.

The story is one of superstitious fantasy which requires not merely a suspension, but a total abandonment of disbelief that might well have been carried off in a 19th century melodrama or in a spooky movie but in which the interchange of different creative media here keeps bringing the disbelief thudding down to the concrete floor of the playing area.

That stated, Darren Thornton's production, despite the theatrical clashes between different elements of the multimedia presentation, is seldom less than inventive and often striking in its images, even if imbalances in both the recorded and live sound leave some of the dialogue difficult to make out. That may not be much loss, given that some of the more audible stretches are full of the sort of psuedo-heroic banality that is of the essence of comic books.

As Eric (a willowy John Ruddy undead and, therefore, unkillable) shoots and knifes and glides his unlikely way through the shouting shadowy cops and crooks, the clearest performance of the night comes from Gillian Durnin as a most affecting 12-year-old street urchin virtually abandoned by her heroin-addicted mother (Yvonne Morgan).

There is understandable stage clumsiness in this complex and difficult undertaking, a work of massive ambition for a young company. But there is also clearly evident a collective and substantial talent which should sharpen and deepen with more experience and greater technical expertise.

But maybe they should be aware that, in theatre, the word "cult" is almost synonymous with cul-de-sac. They need to decide what it is they want to say and then use their talents, technologies and techniques to say it to best effect.

Runs only until Saturday. Booking at (01) 6770643.