Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events

A Camp

Academy, Dublin

While Swedish band The Cardigans go through a temporary hiatus, that band’s vocalist and most intuitive songwriter, Nina Persson, indulges her weird side with A Camp, an intriguing, occasionally beguiling sideline that she shares with husband Nathan Larson and other like-minded musicians.

This was the band’s nominal first appearance in Ireland, yet despite a scant output of two albums in a decade (Persson’s forays with The Cardigans notwithstanding), the Academy was comfortably full with, one would wager, people eagerly awaiting tracks from A Camp’s self-titled 2001 debut rather than any tunes from the back catalogue of The Cardigans.

A Camp didn't disappoint. They peppered the set with tracks from their debut ( Frequent Flyer, Walking the Cow, I Can Buy You) and from their latest album, Colonia ( Stronger Than Jesus, I Signed the Line, My America). In the solitary confines of an iPod, Colonia sounds rather flat, but in a live setting the songs spark to life, thanks to a cracking band.

Unlike most other units that spring readily to mind, A Camp fuse the best parts of melancholy introspection with the better elements of pop. Persson might be viewed (perhaps incorrectly) as a miserable sort from chilly Scandinavia, but she can temper the most maudlin of emotional explorations with biting wit and snappy bittersweet sentiments.

It's all down to having something genuinely interesting to sing about and to having people of calibre to conjure up the accompanying folds of music. And did we mention Persson's voice? If there's a better rock/pop/ indie female vocalist out there (think smoky, but filtered instead of raw), we have yet to hear it. TONY CLAYTON-LEA

The Producers

Gaiety, Dublin

There is a delicious, sustaining irony about The Producers, Mel Brooks's finest work, in which a Broadway show that is deliberately designed to flop somehow ends up a hit. Within that joke lie smaller, similarly shaped jokes that emerge from one another like a series of Russian dolls. The original 1968 film was considered so tasteless it was almost never released, and bombed when it was. The 2001 Broadway musical adaptation, fuelled by the film's cult, was a staggering success. The resulting 2005 film adaptation of the 2001 musical adaptation of the 1968 film version – still with me? – didn't make its money back.

It’s a lesson the story itself understands: if there is no recipe for success, there can’t be one for failure either. All of which is enough to give Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society sleepless nights, but on the evidence of Noel McDonagh’s ludicrously enjoyable production, they should have nothing to worry about.

Brooks’s musical within a musical is all about bewilderingly bad taste and defiantly schlocky standards. This, of course, means that the show we pay to see needs a counterbalance: very slick production values with the cooling charms of beaming innocence. It’s a tough demand to make of a semi-professional group, but while Claire Morrissey’s constantly changing sets lack the sturdiness of the Broadway and West End versions they so carefully emulate, the show never wants for talent, entertainment or dazzle.

The Producersis now essentially an international franchise, bound by contracts and templates, yet there is just enough wriggle room to leave an individual stamp. Take Garry Mountaine as super-producer- turned-super-putz Max Bialystock, or Michael Evans as his nebbish accountant, Leo Bloom, who realises you can make more money with a guaranteed flop than a hit. Both could offer impersonations of previous performers, but each finds his own way in. Mountaine proves a surprisingly lithe and comic performer, while Evans models his spineless wannabe on Jerry Lewis to such an extent that it's a genuine surprise to hear the rich clarity of his singing voice.

There is still little in the score to compare with Springtime for Hitler, the overture so offensive it ought to close the show before page four, but I Wanna Be a Producer, When You've Got It, Flaunt It(in a nicely coquettish delivery from Kate Engelstad as Ulla) and Max's klezmer-style summation, Betrayed, each lodge themselves in the memory.

Oddly, it isn't the comedy of "A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden" that now smacks of cognitive dissonance, but rather the utterly un-PC escapism of each nostalgic musical cliche. Every gay man here is flaming; every chorus girl a confection of spangles and thigh; every German a closet Nazi. You'd dismiss it if it wasn't so well executed, so full of goodwill, so compulsively fun. The RR get that mix precisely right, which is no easy feat. But nor is turning a once-poisoned dart into a Broadway love song, proving you can have your hit musical and eat it too. Until May 9 PETER CRAWLEY

Boylan, Gibbons, Boe, RTÉCO/Wilson

NCH, Dublin

Fans of Irish singer Margaret Burke Sheridan (1889-1958) have had a lot to cheer about over the years. Collections of the Mayo soprano’s recordings have appeared on LP and CD, Anne Chambers wrote a biography for the centenary of her birth in 1989, and the 50th anniversary of her death last year occasioned a commemorative concert and a touring exhibition.

The RTÉ Concert Orchestra got into the act this week with a “gala operatic tribute” at the National Concert Hall, with soprano Orla Boylan, mezzo soprano Anne-Marie Gibbons, tenor Alfie Boe and the orchestra’s recently appointed principal guest conductor, John Wilson, on the podium.

Sheridan has all the trappings of a tragic heroine. At barely more than a decade, her stage career was short, but it was illustrious. The opera houses of Italy were her home. She was admired by Puccini and worked with Toscanini. Her recordings are still treasured – there’s even a sample on YouTube for the as yet unconverted. Her later life was that of a retired diva, a colourful character with an interesting past who liked to embroider her recollections.

This was a celebration in the broadest sense, an excuse to remind the world that there was an Irish singer from Mayo making waves in the operatic world of the 1920s. Although she appeared in just 12 roles, she created two of them, singing Candida in the first production of Respighi's Belfagorand Anna Maria in the premiere of Riccitelli's I Compagnacci, both in 1923. Sadly, none of this strand in La Sheridan's output featured in the RTÉCO's programme. What we got was a fairly typical opera gala, with soprano Orla Boylan showing her great traits of climactic strength and presence, Anne-Marie Gibbons reminding Irish listeners of how she's developed into a mezzo soprano with truly solid projection, and tenor Alfie Boe besting the two ladies in stage charm, but not matching his consistent attractiveness of tone with sufficient breadth in phrasing.

In fact, from a musical point of view, the most interesting aspect of the evening wasn't the singing. It was the playing of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, which John Wilson handled with the chameleon-like skills needed for such a varied programme. He produced a range of effects that made the orchestra sound not only better groomed than usual, but also larger than the numbers on the platform suggested. MICHAEL DERVAN