Macbeth

SFX City Theatre

Loose Canon has returned from its investigation of physical theatre with a strange and beautiful production. Strange as in unfamiliar, and beautiful in ways that are satisfying both visually and conceptually. The way Jason Byrne, the director, and company have reduced the text magnifies the many creative and intelligent choices that have been made. In this Macbeth, the language of the body is as rich as that of the spoken word, and the intensely focused cast of Mark D'Aughton, Karl Quinn and Deirdre Roycroft move sometimes fluidly, sometimes erratically and always in ways that cut straight to the haunted heart of the story. In choosing what to leave in, Byrne has highlighted the supernatural aspects of the text in a way that meshes superbly with a striking use of movement. The players truly strut and fret upon the stage, alluding to the darker forces of fate that have surely manipulated them all.

Susan Conley

Runs until Saturday

It Was 2pm In The Morning

Andrews Lane Theatre

If you need reminding that single women outnumber single men by something like four to one in Dublin, or if this strikes far too true a chord, then this is the show for you. Female Parts, founded earlier this year to provide good leading roles for women, set out to explore the dilemma of being 30 and single in the city. Kevin McGee's direction and funny, perceptive script balance overbearing feminism with drippy male dependency. Annette (Caroline Mullarkey) is eternally optimistic, showing up for a string of blind dates, while Helen (Bairbre Scully) is the cynical wit prevented from having a social life by her elderly and demanding mother (played, delightfully, by Yvonne Robbins). The men are mostly caricatures: underage Max, the nameless serenader and Larry, the boyfriend of sorts who turns out to be the weakest link. There is to be no walking hand in hand into the sunset here, thank goodness.

Laura Smith

Runs until October 20th

Wash-O-Rama

All American Laundrette

Rebecca Walter seems to choose to confine the choreography for her Catapult Dance Company within limited time and space. Last fortnight it was 10 minutes in a narrow corridor with XYZ. Now it is 18 minutes on and around the washing machines in the All American Laundrette. The audience watched from the street as the six dancers inside the lit windows fussed with their hair and tidied each other's clothes in the interest of self-improvement, giving physical expression to their resentments. Somehow they even managed to fit arabesques and turns en attitude around the machines and between cheeky songs at the two microphones, using the machines as additional partners in lifts. As with XYZ, it was all original, inventive and fun, bringing cheers from the crowd on South Great George's Street.

Carolyn Swift

Runs until Saturday

AprΦs Match

Olympia Theatre

Loose wigs, stick-on beards, rubbish Irish dancing and some excruciatingly funny characterisations of the media and its personalities: the AprΦs Match team came back with a stage show (recorded for video release and television broadcast) that creaked at the edges but had a rock-solid centre. Gary Cooke, Barry Murphy and Risteβrd Cooper showed comic inspiration as they sailed through some tough, if largely parochial, humour - and occasionally took a shot at too easy targets. Football matters took up a large proportion of the sketches, and digs at RT╔, TV3 and Today FM also came thick and fast. Yet these paled in comparison with the best sketch of the evening, Murphy's supercilious German who pontificates on the differences between his homeland and Ireland. Ultra-smart, it pointed a way out of the funny but ultimately dead-end football and local-celeb material.

Tony Clayton-Lea

Butterflies

International Bar

Butterflies, a short story by Ian McEwan, is brought to the stage by Semper Fi and narrated solely by Ned Dennehy, sitting rigidly on the small stage at the International Bar. Although the story opens with the revelation that a young girl has drowned in a canal, the atmosphere is fairly light. McEwan's writing is humorous and engaging, while Dennehy's still and considered presence is captivating. Dennehy gently embodies the character of the narrator, a lonely recluse who drifts aimlessly through life, while drawing the story along with increasing anxiety and tension. With the introduction of nine-year-old Jane, brought to life with childlike innocence and naivety, a cold and nervous unease takes hold. Dying for companionship, the recluse, with no apparent control over his actions, is suddenly driven by wholly sinister motives. It is with understated force that Dennehy brings the story to its shocking and sickening conclusion.

Laura Smith

Runs until Saturday

Songs Of Joyce

Bewley's Cafe Theatre

Aidan Coleman has brought together three generations of his family to pay homage to James Joyce with an evening of songs and monologues, and his passion for the writer is compelling. Offering a whistle-stop tour of Joyce's life, he provides some biographical gems - a fine singer, Joyce once competed with Count John McCormack, for example. The cosy, candlelit setting of Bewley's adds to the sense of stepping into the Coleman family's living room. Auntie Nancy sits to one side of the stage, wrapped in a shawl, and halfway through the night reveals a velvet footman's costume and dons a white wig for her performance of La Donna E Mobile. Perhaps more could be made of the enchanting harmonies of Coleman's voice alongside those of his sons. The dramatic tension - will Coleman's glasses fall off, will Auntie Nancy keep the wig on? - and Coleman's ardent delivery make the evening entertaining and, occasionally, surreal.

Jemimah Bailey

Runs until Saturday

Midden

Dra∅ocht, Blanchardstown

A "Midden" is a dunghill. In Derry, it means, simply, a mess. In Morna Regan's first stage play, both meanings are apparent; the Sweeney family has long been a dumping ground for suppressed bitterness, vexed relationships, tragic misunderstandings and terrible secrets. The women carry the burden, putting on brave faces. In old age, however, confusion and diminished inhibition can turn into lucidity and honesty. Barbara Adair's cantankerous Dophie has been driving Dolores (Ruth Hegarty), her widowed daughter, and Aileen (Pauline Hutton), her deceptively jolly granddaughter, round the bend for years. But it takes the arrival home from America of Ruth (Kathy Downes), Dolores's volatile elder daughter, to cause Dophie's senile meanderings to erupt into a painful showdown. Lynne Parker's pacy production, for Rough Magic, moves this well-observed play out of the realms of standard family drama and crafts a heightened but truthful portrayal of domestic conflict and mother-daughter relationships.

Jane Coyle

Runs until Saturday; this is a short version of the review that we printed at the end of August

Dublin Fringe Festival continues until Saturday. You can make bookings at 1850-374643 or 01-6773850, or call into 2 Temple Bar Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. You can also book online, at www.fringefest.com

For information on travel and festivals in Ireland, see the Irish Times website, at www.ireland.com/explore