A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics

All of Human Life is Here

Bosco Theatre

Volta’s baffling comedy sketch show is a series of misfires that dangerously treads the line between humour and offence. Characters such as Mick Connor, Ireland’s first Traveller taoiseach, an aspirant immigrant toilet-cleaner and security guard, and a celebrity chef who associates food with sex, layer stereotype and easy prejudice upon each other. When Victor says “theatre is shit, I love television”, he could well be describing Volta’s main problem, as the filmed sketches in the show are far superior to the live performances, most notably the Louis-Theroux-meets-Hitler skit and the confessional wealthy ligger’s guide to surviving the recession. Wearing microphones to amplify their voices in the small tent, live performers Liam Hourican, Jim Roach and Olga Wehrly compete for attention with the cheering crowds next door at La Clique. Three anonymous musicians provide live accompaniment, a blend of cabaret and Russian heavy-metal.

The nail in the coffin for the show comes in the final sketch, which features a terrible impressionist whose jokes are just not funny. It's made even more cringe-worthy because the audience is barely laughing. Until Sat. SARA KEATING

Black Bessie

Merrion Square

The audience are gathered around a ring of votive candles as if in worship, the light barely illuminating the shape of a woman cowering under a blanket of leaves. This is Black Bessie, homeless and mad, who takes her name from the bike she rides.

Úna Kavanagh’s dense Beckettian text is a rush of words and thoughts and confessions. In under 30 minutes she shares her life story: a failed marriage, the death of her children, mental illness, and the strangling attitudes to sex that a repressed religious society engendered. Playing low to the ground, caressing the earth, Kavanagh – who also performs this short, impressionistic piece – embodies Black Bessie’s own desperate desire to join her children in the grave.

Director Karl Shiels, meanwhile, sculpts some startling visual images. Black Bessie's confession is occasionally impenetrable and the candlelight is often so low as to obscure her body beyond a moving blur. This might not make for traditional appreciation by an audience, but as a case of form mirroring content it is more than fitting.Until Sat. SARA KEATING

Four Last Things

Fringe Factory

Janey (Jane McGrath) is back home on the farm, wishing she could trade the silence and solitude others love about the country for the bustle of Dublin and the college life she has stepped away from. Janey’s dad, Brendan (Eamonn Hunt), can only watch, wonder and hope that a holiday will help. And Bob (Moe Dunford), her adoring dog, smelling the human fear all round, simply stays by her side.

Writer Lisa Tierney-Keogh gives eloquent monologues to three otherwise inarticulate creatures in a moving tale about the isolation of depression, the stark gulf between a sufferer and those looking on. Director Garrett Keogh (Lisa's father) draws strong performances from the cast in a production that falls away somewhat, however, in the closing scene. In a show whose strength has been in its simplicity and in the quality of its script, unnecessary props such as a photograph and a rose strike a false, fussy note. Until Sat. PAULA SHIELDS

Spartacus: High- way to Hell

Civic Offices

Would the real Spartacus please stand up? Whiplash Productions’ free outdoor extravaganza, a ludicrously enjoyable staple of the Fringe, now finds itself in the throes of an identity crisis. Torn between a gleeful sword-and-sandals epic and an overly serious agit-prop allegory, Gavin Kostick’s dependably clever treatment of the Roman slave revolt slackens with soapbox rhetoric in a show that is, literally, all over the place.

Having quite sensibly simplified Shakespeare's convoluted history plays into rock operas costumed by a sex shop, director Paul Burke expands his aesthetic to include musical numbers – some of them snarling showstoppers, others merely slowing it – while stock-in-trade fight sequences spill routinely into brawls, their action and significance lost in prison-break pandemonium. Some divinely funny moments – a gauntlet battle of Rock, Paper, Scissors, a slave painfully "unmanning" himself before a falsetto swan song, a chariot race in golf-karts – alleviate the confusion, but if the intention is to stir us into action – "You're Spartacus!" – it would help to know what's going on first. Run concluded. PETER CRAWLEY

Very Viva: Maria Tecce

Bosco Theatre

Maria Tecce glides on to the small stage, all lithe, feline limbs and glowing Mediterranean smiles. Backed by a fluid and percussive band of Dave Redmond on bass, Mike Nielsen on guitar and Francesco Turrisi on accordion, she delivers a warm and affectionate set of songs in Spanish and English, with elements of tango, ballads and bossa nova.

Some come with charming introductions, others rely on her theatricality and terrifically expressive face and voice (the woman can convey disdain as much with a raised eyebrow as with her lungs) to translate their message of broken hearts, rotten men and shattered dreams. “My favourite part of being in love is seduction,” she purrs at one point.

An oddly distant crowd in a somewhat chilly venue don't perhaps entirely surrender to her charms, which is odd because she is terribly seductive. Ends tonight. LAURENCE MACKIN