REVIEWS

Radiohead' recent Dublin concert and the new play I Can't Sleepare reviewed by Irish Timeswriters.

Radiohead

Malahide Castle, Dublin

IT RAINED, then the sun shone, and then - would you Adam and Eve it, as if in sneaky homage to the title of their latest studio album - not one but two vivid rainbows came out minutes prior to Radiohead shuffling on stage.

As a starter to the Friday gig - the first of two shows by the Oxford band, currently lumbered with the title of the World's Most Hard-working Anti-Music Industry Band - it was serendipitous, if not downright spooky.

There are, by now two very distinct sides to the Radiohead oeuvre: their early, genre- defining, influential and inordinately dynamic rock music (notably based around their albums Pa blo Honey, The Bendsand OK Computer), and their genre-fragmenting, jittery, skittery, virtually improvisational rock music ( Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief).

Both sides fuse to form the band's core appeal and both sides were very much in evidence at the weekend.

Indeed, one of the most important points regarding Radiohead tends to get lost amid all the chatter about their anti- music industry stance: how brilliant they are as a live band.

On record - particularly with the musically obtuse Kid Aand Amnesiac- the sound is obstinately diffuse; on stage, the edges are softened somewhat, resulting in a light-headed if twitchy groove that makes so much sense it's bewildering how you ever thought otherwise.

There are problems, however, and it's more with the demeanour of Radiohead than the music; if the music is loose, then the band seem to be coiled up tighter than elastic in a tennis ball.

There is little sense from the stage that this is a communal event; disgruntlement, too, drifts through sections of the notably mature audience like fog in a Hammer horror movie, leaving more people than you'd think to look at the wording on one of the environmentally friendly T-shirts on sale ('You used to be alright - what happened?') and remark to their friends: "How true."

Ultimately, though, this was a very fine display of a band invigorated by a sense of liberation; they might not be as traditionally exciting as they once were (in truth, the gig only comes thrillingly alive when tracks from OK Computerand The Bendsare played), but new motives equal fresh results.

And Radiohead are anything but static or stale. - TONY CLAYTON-LEA

I Can't Sleep

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

The idea of writing a play for children on the struggle to get to sleep at night is a good one. With such a clear title, we are not surprised when we arrive in the theatre to find two people lying quietly under their duvets in bed on an otherwise empty stage.

Once the audience is seated, David O'Doherty sits blot upright in bed, telling us all that he can't sleep.

Thereafter, he and his roommate (we don't even know if it's his sister), Maeve Higgins embark on a number of imaginary games to help him fall asleep.

O'Doherty's alert wakefulness and Higgins's deadpan humour are entertaining for a while, but the counting of elephants, socks, rocks and then sharks instead of sheep didn't quite capture the imaginations of the children in my company.

Similarly, the requests to the audience for activities to make him tired (football, swimming, skiing, skiing and basketball) seemed much more part of the stand-up routines with which both actors/comedians are more familiar than a direct engagement with children.

Even the improvised story - again invented from suggestions from the audience - seemed to be more a self-indulgent game between the two comedians in pyjamas than part of a show aimed at six- to 10-year-olds.

While his ongoing commentary on how well the actors were doing might work well in stand-up, it was seriously wide of the mark for a children's show.

Children expect improvisation and they don't need it to be constantly evaluated as part of the process.

Overall, I Can't Sleepis a show more suited to adults who like to remember their own bedtime fun and games than a show for children nowadays whose bedtime antics are often aimed at detaining adults for longer and longer at the end of a busy day. - SYLVIA THOMPSON