Reviews

A round-up of reviews from Irish Timeswriters:

Stone Mad

Everyman Palace, Cork

Like the book from which it takes its name, Stone Madspeaks of a reverence for the well-made thing. And, like the book by sculptor Seamus Murphy, this is ostensibly a simple story honestly told.

Commissioned as part of the Murphy centenary celebrations, the mood is of fellowship among the men in a Cork monumental stone-yard (originally O'Connor's in Blackpool) reflecting on the quarries, the tools, the craft of stone-carving and cutting itself. Their philosophy is one of observation and appreciation, sustained by the spirit of the masonic guilds which has survived for over a thousand years. Murphy witnessed the obliteration of that spirit, and his book is a tribute to the men who personified it as he knew them.

Playwright Johnny Hanrahan's adaptation follows the contemplative tone, while enlivening the action with occasional stage-centre characterisations presented by the journeymen "stonies", the parade of men who tramped from town to town and hopefully from church to church in search of work, and whose museums are the graveyards of the country.

It is possible that Hanrahan has been a little too reverent, settling for regret at the passing of an honourable tradition in which a craft coiled, from headstone inscriptions to foliage and finials, into art. The play might have been more forceful had he unearthed some of Murphy's underlying but passionate awareness of just what was being lost, and why, and what the wholesale substitution of the synthetic for the real meant in terms of human and cultural values. But the adaptation honours the essence of the text, especially through Eamonn Hunt's depiction of Murphy, both as boy at the beginning of his apprenticeship and as man many years later. Director Pat Kiernan must have known that this can be a risky strategy but his faith in Hunt, as in all the cast, is justified, as the changes in age and understanding are indicated through a gesture, a change of expression or a friendly conversation. A risk that wasn't worth taking, however, was that of signalling episodes or scene-changes with music, and the wrong kind of music at that. Paul Denby's lighting design could have managed these interludes, just as Leonore McDonagh's costume design matches the set by Cliff Dolliver, wafting its stone-dust-like incense at this shrine for men whose pride was based on the fact that their ancestors had cut the letters of the 10 Commandments for Moses. - Mary Leland

• Runs until Apr 21. Booking: 021-4501673.

100 Minutes 2007

Project Cube, Dublin

The title of Painted Filly's second series of 10 short plays may have proven inexact, but you could see the point; Two Hours, Give or Takelacks a certain punch. There is something satisfying, however, in an open call for "new plays about now" which yields results that are tricky to measure. The styles and concerns of these 10 mini-dramas might vary sharply, but all are well served by a capable company of 10 performers.

The constraints of a 10-minute piece are a tall order for any writer. (Winston Churchill once apologised for delivering a particularly long speech, adding: "I did not have time to write a short one.") If this leads playwriting towards the sketch format, offering either slim slices of absurdism, gentle two-handers with accelerating exposition, or frantic, blurting comedies, the success of this crop is that, even within predictable formats, fresh writing talent can deliver an occasional surprise.

Elizabeth Hoye's engaging Yes, an encounter in a train station between a reserved psychiatry student (Bush Moukarzel, excellent) and one of those wild free spirits that generally inhabit such short plays (Hannah Grady), keeps its writing gentle and comic and trains its focus on the innumerable possibilities of a single word. Austen Breaffa's charming Guarded, an encounter between a Dublin street kid (Mark Gordon) and a Polish door man (Barry John Byrne) transcends census-taking cliche with dialogue of a similarly light touch.

Although Hugh Cardiff's bite-sized docudrama One Summer, Last Centuryis remarkable for its detail - an Ulster loyalist still gulps his pints for fear of sudden evacuation - the strongest pieces are those that remain most elusive. Phil Kingston's Risky, an elliptical glimpse at an improper relationship, and Caitlin Mitchell's The Wake of Collision, an elliptical glimpse at an impossible relationship, are each so intriguing, hovering between opacity and revelation, they could refer to anything at all: cities, war, calamity, connection. Any worries that short topical dramas might approach the times with a truncheon are defused by such deft handling of the scalpel.

Inevitably not everything works: a blustering comedy about Irish acronyms contains a smart idea but finds no purchase on the stage; a portrait of an emotionally frigid father-daughter relationship similarly falters; but The Number 19, Jennifer Killelea's devised piece in which each member of the ensemble gets a chance to shine is the right number to go out on.

Like the best displays of these new voices, the absorbing performances of Bush Moukarzel and Art Kearns, or indeed Painted Filly's short-form endeavours, it abides by the best principle of showmanship: always leave them wanting more. - Peter Crawley

• Ends tomorrow. Booking: 01-8819613.