REVIEWS

Reviewed today are Big Sister, Little Brotherat the Draiocht in Blanchardstown, King Oedipus/Oedipus at Colonusat the National Library and Neon Neon at the Tripod

Big Sister, Little Brother

Draiocht, Blanchardstown

There is a current trend among children's writers to fiddle with traditional fairy tales, turning them inside out and upside down. In book form, this can work well, as in the case of Lauren Child's innovative illustrated stories. However, in theatre there is a greater risk. While traditional tales can come wonderfully alive through drama, tampering unduly with them can be confusing for younger children.

Barnstorm Theatre Company's new touring production takes Hans Christian Andersen's story, The Emperor's New Clothesas inspiration, but rather than tell the story of how the selfish and vain emperor is fooled into appearing naked on a grand parade, children's writer Mike Kenny tells the story from the viewpoint of the deceitful tailors while they are on the run from the emperor.

The main problem is that the tailors - Aideen Wylde and Paul Curley - are cast as sister and brother and the constant sibling squabbles don't sit easily alongside the expected pomp and ceremony of the emperor's palace. The fact that there are no other actors in the play (although Curley doubles as the empress and momentarily as the chief minister) means the audience can't easily escape into other characters.

And, while sometimes funny (big sisters are often mean to their little brothers is the repeated message), the everyday bickering between sister and brother dominates the show and leaves little opportunity to soak up the bigger message about the foolish emperor and his invisible clothes.

The 40-minute show is aimed at four- to seven-year-olds, and the young audience at this performance seemed happy enough with what they saw. However, Barnstorm Theatre Company has served up much more dynamic and engaging children's theatre

in the past, so seasoned fans would be expecting more than this current production delivers. Tour continues to Sligo, Kilkenny and Waterford this month SYLVIA THOMPSON

King Oedipus/Oedipus at Colonus

National Library

WB Yeats spent 25 years completing his "modern versions" of Sophocles' Oedipusplays. Towards the end of his life he marked them as one of his greatest accomplishments, although he gave the simple, devastating arc of Sophocles' tragedy the credit: "the Greek drama alone achieved perfection". The triumph of Yeats's translations, however, was that he stripped away the ornamented verse of 19th-century classical translations and rendered the tragedy in the spare lucid clarity of everyday speech which still resonates with easy grace today.

Despite being completed during the heyday of his theatrical experimentation, Yeats was determined to strip Sophocles' classical tragedies of any pretension. The Greek social model of the theatre had inspired his original ambitions for the Abbey, and Sophocles provided him with a dramatic template that was non-naturalistic and ritualistic (complementing his own creative proclivities), as well as democratic and widely accessible. This Dublin Lyric Players' production is only the third time that the plays have been performed together, and under Conor O'Malley's restrained directorial eye, Yeats's aesthetic of accessibility is diligently adhered to. The result, however, is often merely faithful rather than dynamic.

Upon a distractingly creaky makeshift stage, the actors address the audience as citizens of Thebes, in an attempt to replicate the relationship between the theatre and the state in ancient Greece. Patrick Dunne makes a commanding Oedipus: sympathetic even in arrogance, when he thinks he can evade his fate, and heroically humble in his suffering. Other performances are more uneven, with actors stumbling over lines in some cases, while the Chorus fails to create the incantatory rhythms demanded by Yeats's plain verse.

Caoimhe Dunn's settings are more suggestive than symbolic, and the muted palette of the costumes and painted backcloth complement the simplicity of O'Malley's staging, while special mention must be made of Oedipus' stunning blind-eyed mask. However, this devastated appearance of the tragic hero makes for one of the only moments of real excitement in the three-hour staging. Because - despite the universal tenets of "death, despair, divisions of families" that still resonate for a contemporary audience - the relentless unfolding of the plays' end leaves the audience with little to connect with.

Ends tonight SARA KEATING

Neon Neon

Tripod, Dublin

Stainless Style, the Mercury prize-nominated debut release by Neon Neon, better known as LA producer Boom Bip and Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys, is a concept album about the automotive entrepreneur and international playboy John DeLorean. Perfect fodder for a creative live show you might imagine: a flashy sports car replica here, a scantily clad model there. This wasn't quite what the audience got in Tripod, but the one-hour show was very much designed to appeal to the visual and aural senses.

Against a backdrop of three screens projecting archive footage of DeLorean and 1980s Tron-style graphics, Rhys introduced the evening as "a biographical show" about "the lives, wives and tragic fall" of the renowned car engineer. Occasionally donning a keytar, a reminder of the era that influenced the music, the four musicians guided us through a spliced timeline of DeLorean's life. The electro-pop of the album was rendered perfectly, from the sleekly designed I Told Her On Alderaanand Steel Your Girlto the borderline parody of Michael Douglas.

Using giant cue cards bearing words such as "Applause" and "Oh!" the Welsh singer prompted the audience's responses. It might sound a lot like a bad panto, in reality it was good-natured clean fun. That changed rapidly with the appearance of the all-singing, all-gyrating Har Mar Superstar who did his best to steal the show. Joining the band to sing Trick for Treatand then perform guitar and percussion duties, the diminutive Minnesota native rallied the audience in a way the quietly spoken Rhys never could. And it made a difference.

All of a sudden the venue became a mass of dancing bodies. The female hip-hop duo Yo! Majesty added vocals to the steamy Sweat Shopso, by the time the extended drum-fest outro of Stainless Stylewas complete, the thrilled crowd were in no doubt they had been taken for a full-throttle, white knuckle ride. BRIAN KEANE