Reviews

Tommy Tiernan comes on in a woollen hat and raincoat, showing the beginnings of a black beard. Don't be noisy, he warns his audience of children aged six plus; that makes me angry. The battery on his portable computer is low and may run out, so don't interrupt.

Tommy Tiernan's Original Stories for Children, The Ark, Temple Bar

He reads his story from the small screen. Jack and his older sister Emily have granddad for a babysitter. He's a horrible man with bulging yellow eyes, a dribble and a smell like a wino's sleeping bag; also he monopolises the TV. But he falls asleep, and the siblings quarrel over what programme they'll watch. Jack loses and sneaks out in a tantrum.

Wandering in a forest, Jack is captured by Frimps, furry little monsters whose Queen Jezebel wants to get married. Frimps can marry outside their own species, but the groom is boiled for food three minutes after the wedding. Jack is guarded by Frimps with angry rats on pointed sticks, and things look bad until Emily shows up with granddad's gun and shoots Jezebel in the face. The boy and girl race for home, but wake in the night to find their house besieged by malignant Frimps. The story ends there.

Some laughs are generated by this, especially when words like smart-arse, women's boobies and pooey-vomity breath are used. When asked by their host if they enjoyed his story, a majority assented but a significant minority, with whom I am in sympathy, did not. To conclude, he tells the children that school uniforms are designed to make them all look the same, and then think the same. Refuse to wear them tomorrow, he advises; tell your parents that Tommy said not to. Mmmm. - Gerry Colgan

Final schools' performance tomorrow, noon

Dublin Theatre Festival booking at: 1850 374 643

I Can't Stand Up, Space Upstairs, Project

The first impression of the five performers raised expectations. Not the usual attitudes and body types for a dance performance. But dressed in street clothes and with a mix of ages these guys looked interesting. Then the two live musicians cranked up, supplementing the sound and visuals on the white glasshouse-shaped set of screens and the movement slowly began, prostrate bodies emerging from the floor in response to the falling building on the screen. Dishearteningly things soon moved into dated physical theatre, à la 1990s Britain. The lads threw themselves at each other, but always carefully, each sequence set up in a WWF kind of way. Performances were energetic, but energy is a pre-requisite in dance, not a cover-up for form and content. Weak characterisation didn't help and knowing the performers were a dancer, romancer, refugee, soldier, singer, stand-up, stuntman, builder and bomber was certainly not evident in the performance. - Michael Seaver

Runs until tomorrow

Fringe festival booking at: 01-6792320, www.fringefest.com

The Darkness, Vicar St

You could have made it up. Four unreconstructed rawk monsters, who look like they've just emerged from Spinal Tap's onstage cocoons. Their leader, Justin Hawkins, is clad from long blond mane to knee-high boot in a white spandex bodysuit, its neckline plunging all the way to his pubic hair. His brother, guitarist Dan Hawkins, rocks a Thin Lizzy T-Shirt in honour of his Dublin hosts. The bassist, Frankie Poullain, wears a space ninja headband and a moustache-style not seen since Saxon or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The drummer, Ed Graham, doesn't spontaneously combust onstage, but the moment The Darkness sashay onto the Vicar St stage, the crowd explodes with hysteria.What follows is an hour-and-a-quarter of delicious Darkness, brought to us by the twin gods of glam and heavy metal, with just a touch of irony.

Physical Sex sets the tone for the evening: sexy, sweaty, preening, prancing, raucous, riff-tastic rock 'n' roll, in the grand tradition of Queen, AC/DC, Judas Priest and - well, why not? - the great Tap themselves. Hawkins's falsetto grabs tunes like Black Shuck, Growing On Me and Get Your Hands Off My Woman in a choke-hold, wringing out every whoop and yelp, and reaching towards that high level only dogs can detect.

The male fans happily screech along, stretching their range to bloodvessel-breaking point. The girls stretch out their hands to get a spark of static spandex electricity from their new rock hero.

The band strut around the stage, striking every guitar-god pose in the book, Justin and Dan's twin guitars sound like a duel between Brian May and Angus Young, with Eddie Van Halen caught in the crossfire.

"This one's by a band from Oxford called The Radioheads," announces Justin, before doing a version of Street Spirit that would be considered blasphemous in indie circles. The Darkness, however, are the anti-indie band, reliving an age when Freddie Mercury not Thom Yorke was the real rock star template. The show ends with Justin being carried shoulder-high through the crowd while playing a guitar solo. Let's hope The Darkness conquer the world, so next time they can bring motherships, Stonehenges, flames and, of course, a giant inflatable cod-piece. - Kevin Courtney

The Country Girl, Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

The structural efficiency of Clifford Odets' play The Country Girl is so compelling that director Michael Twomey might have let the cast run on automatic and still be sure this Everyman Theatre presentation would stand the test of the 40 years since the play announced the arrival of the first Everyman season.

Admittedly, there are a few moments when it seems this is exactly what he has done: the work is so thoughtful that the pauses for impact, for consideration or for awareness can slacken what is already a measured pace.

But this story of the girl from the country whose alcoholic actor husband depends on her for all his faith in himself gathers strength as it moves from the introductory on-stage rehearsals to the culminating back-stage revelations.

Odets never over-wrote, yet the opportunities for the cast are marvellous and are grasped here with greedy but authoritative hands.

It is an elegant play, beautifully written and beautifully performed. David Coon as the theatrical financier Cook has a sullen power; David Lumsden as the actor Frank Elgin is convincing in his swerving, unnerving progress from sot to star - no easy thing as he has to lace his self-delusions with some kind of enduring appeal.

With this kind of support, Ber Power as the director Bernie Dodd and Catherine Prendergast as Georgie, the ageing girl of the title can make the play their own - and they do.

Power's ownership is blunt - Dodd has a fondness for antiseptic truths - but Prendergast, always a sensitive actress, plays with a slow-burning radiance

all the more affecting because Odets can't quite make her a heroine.

Ray Casey's lighting, Donal O'Donovan's choice of music and the softly-accented costumes by designer

Patrick Murray enhance the authenticity and the convention of this production, the light-framed proscenium capturing the action like a glittering cage. - Mary Leland

Continues until Saturday, October 11th, booking at: 021-4501673