Reviews

Barry wrote this short play in the mid-1990s, but it is only now having its first outing on the stage, in a very worthwhile début. For about 50 minutes, we listen to two nuns telling the story of their lives and friendship, in the form of an interview with an unseen questioner.

Fred and Jane

Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin

The setting is a room in a convent, neatly suggested by Emma Cullen's design, with the two nuns sitting side by side. The older is Beatrice, once from the midlands, whose girlhood passions were boys and the cinema. As the boys were slow to appear, the film world took over, and she had a vision: a dove descended on the head of Fred Astaire, and her vocation thus made itself known.

Dubliner Anna was also a film fan, and her obsession was improbably with Jane Fonda in the film Klute, where she played a prostitute. The convent called anyway, and she struck up an enduring friendship with Beatrice. But the thought may have entered the mind of their superiors that their closeness was a little, um, wonky, and Anna was sent to a mission in Manchester.

Apart, they both suffered mentally and physically. Anna felt as if she was both pregnant and menopausal, while Beatrice acquired ulcers, diabetes and something pernicious. But a kindly senior had another vision, of both of them dancing, and brought Anna back. Together they face into a changing world, and are content.

Colette Proctor and Mary McEvoy, directed by Caroline Fitzgerald, are excellent as the friends, capturing a true sense of, pardon the coinage, nun-ness. The play is slight, but suffused with humour and sadness, and with a happy ending. That will do nicely for me. - Gerry Colgan

Runs at 1.10 p.m. until September 21st. Booking at 086-8784001

Jay Farrar/Peter Bruntnell

Whelans, Dublin

A pair we have here: first up on stage is Peter Bruntnell, an Englishman dragged through an Americana wasteland of doomed relationships, failed marriages and getting from emotional points A to Z via signposts that lead to culs de sac. Bruntnell is, however, a reassuring presence, a man who looks sturdy enough to weather the majority of whatever life throws at him. He sings a line such as "truth can be like iodine - it helps but it hurts" as if he's really been there, and if there are better Americana songs sung by a Brit as By The Time My Head Gets To Phoenix and You Won't Find Me, then this writer has yet to hear them. Which makes the subdued appearance of Jay Farrar all the more pleasing.

Farrar is something of a cult figure in the alt.country movement, a former member of two of the genre's most inspiring bands, Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, and currently a lonesome journeyman on his way to, quite likely, equally moderate solo success.

Accompanied by a lone guitarist, Farrar doesn't say much between the songs, which makes a refreshing change from those singer/songwriters who clearly ache to make it as comedians should their music career falter. Quiet but by no means surly, he trawls through his back pages - a song from Uncle Tupelo days here, a tune from Son Volt nights there - as well as performing tracks from his recent, alarmingly good solo album, Sebastopol.

He cuts an intriguing figure with a superb drawl of a voice - part Michael Stipe, part Damien Jurado, completely American; an influential musician who makes no great claims for his great music. In essence, Farrar is a singer/songwriter without a band who will probably forever strike out on his own, fully in control of his destiny, strumming his guitar, forging ahead with his special brand of extremely high quality lo-fi. Super gig. - Tony Clayton-Lea

The Little Prince

The Granary, Cork

Adapted by Alan T. Collins and presented by the Seven Ages Theatre Company, The Little Prince emerges yet again in its true colours: it is not a story for children at all.

Aviator and novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote it as a philsophical, and somewhat whimsical, discussion of the transcendant value of the ephemeral; its strong sub-text of love, death and redemption carries the same metaphorical weight as some of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales (especially The Selfish Giant) but without the Wildean suggestion of a happy ending.

This is a lot to ask children to put up with, and director Donal Gallagher's somewhat cumbersome stage effects can't do very much to lighten the lengthy narrative sequences or highlight the specifics of this desert encounter between stranded pilot and wandering star-child. Yet the integrity of the story survives. The survival is due to Luke Buckley as the Pilot; harnessed to a heavy French accent he remains articulate, accurate and above all credible. This is an enchanting performance, assisted by the conviction of Mark Forde as the Prince and of Raymond Brothers in a variety of other roles.  - Mary Leland

The Little Prince continues at the Granary until August 31st, at 2.30 p.m. and at 7.30 on August 22nd -24th and 29th-31st. Box Office: 021 4543210 or 021 4904275