REVIEWS: DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL

A look at the best from the Dublin Fringe Festival

Cathy Davey Presents Songs That Scare Children***

Spiegeltent, Iveagh Gardens

Remember that desolate, skin-crawling childhood terror when seemingly innocuous stories and songs lodge deep in our imaginations? Cathy Davey and her lurid conglomerate of fellow one-time-children (including Lisa Hannigan, Carla Gallagher, David Turpin and Conor O'Brien) conjured a world of stardust and fairytales made of Cole Porter, Hans Christian Andersen and Rogers and Hammerstein, with a compelling atmosphere of impending doom in their arrangements. Davey's baby-doll vocals were an intriguing mix of Marilyn Monroe, Bernadette Peters and Jane Siberry, and her charismatic composure anchored a fantasia that was largely irresistible.

Even the occasional creaky vocal didn't dampen the spooky spirits. As with Hal Willner's Rogues Gallery, fingers crossed that this raggle-taggle gathering doesn't disperse just yet.

• Show concluded SIOBHÁN LONG

Chronicles of a Sleepless Moon**

Bosco Theatre, Iveagh Gardens

The little boy (he was aged about five) in the front row loved it. He chortled and chuckled and crowed with delight. The audience loved it and gave it a curtain call. I didn't love it. So it must be me, right? Suitcase Royale is an Australian company specialising in "junkyard theatre", which means the props are made up of bits and pieces - old wardrobes, lots of cardboard, charming miniature houses, puppets, bits of radio - to tell the tale of a newsman, a mad doctor and a murderous butcher and their plan to map the desert from underground in a machine fuelled by cow's blood. There's a quasi-Edwardian Journey to the Centre of the Earth atmosphere. It seemed under-developed, unfunny and under-rehearsed to me. Its 55 minutes felt three times as long. But the child loved it.

• Until Sat NOELEEN DOWLING

Dance Double Bill 1****

Project Upstairs

Although inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, choreographer Claire Cunningham's entrance on three extended crutches was more reminiscent of Theo Jansen's spindly, elegant kinetic sculptures, each twisted move appearing strange yet perfectly natural. Throughout her own well-constructed Mobile, she outlines her relationship with her crutches, whose bad design might pinch her elbow but which remain her "partner and job". Text apart, it is her movement - on and off crutches -that perfectly describe their bond.

Colette Sadler's The Making of Doubt is a tour de force, dark and at times creepy in its investigation of reality through the use of soft mannequins and prosthetic limbs. Largely faceless in their hoodies, the four dancers start out indistinguishable from the similarly dressed mannequins, which are thrown around, manipulated and eventually stripped and abandoned. In the end, Sadler's masterful manipulation leaves the audience with a bitter aftertaste that caused a lengthy silence before the final appreciative applause.

• Ends tonight MICHAEL SEAVER

Exposures*

FIlmbase, Temple Bar

Not so much a play; more a game with a get-a-life motif. At the meeting place, you're handed a camera, a number of snaps and some vague written directions. And then you're off, on your own.

The idea, an import from the UK, is to take photos of things that you connect with. You are also directed to places where people speak strangely to you. For myself, a young woman berated me, another gave me bloodstained books and a tape recorder, and I was refused an overnight bed in a shelter. That wasn't fair, since I was clean and sober.

I stuck it out to the end, then fled. There will be a final photo exhibition and party in due course, from which I beg to be excused.

• Until Sep 21 GERRY COLGAN

Luck****

Pantibar

In this autobiographical tale of life in Las Vegas, writer-performer Megan Riordan plays with chance in more ways than one. The story of her life as the daughter (and sidekick) of a professional gambler unfolds in accordance with the audience's "plays": three rolls of a dice, three flips of a coin, three random cards, and we hear of a life defined by luck - her father's luck, though, not her own.

Under the guise of her gambling alias, Kim, Riordan gives an engaging and startlingly confessional performance, in which - despite the fun and games - there are no tricks up her sleeve. But there is real invention in this autobiography too: the gestures of gambling codes and rituals are reshaped into an obsessive dance that, aptly, almost seems like demonic possession.

Luck, Riordan tells us, is a chance happening: that which happens beyond a person's control. Riordan's story may have ultimately been a genetic happenstance - the luck of birth, destiny rather than fate - however, the success of this compelling and original piece of theatre is entirely her own.

• Until Sun SARA KEATING

Performance Research Experiment #1****

Players Theatre, TCD

Maybe it's their Hawaiian shirts. Or the fact that they're both shoeless. But something quickly alerts you that the methodology behind Jess Curtis and Jörg Müller's archly unscientific experiment may be firmly tongue-in-cheek.

Delivering 11 "micro-pieces", ranging from the basic diversion of sliotars scudding across the bare stage to rudely impressive circus skills and quite affecting, semi-naked dance sequences, they challenge us to call a halt to it. When five audience members have announced their disengagement, the scene ends. As a research project, it owes rather more to The Gong Show than the Large Hadron Collider, yet it makes for an oddly compelling experience. It takes a hard heart to cut short Müller's anal broom-balancing, but we become merciless at the first hint of an endurance test. The researchers' dry wit and our sense of collective control becomes so hugely infectious, though, that it comes with a caution: "Don't do this at other shows. They will not respond the way we do."

• Ends tomorrow PETER CRAWLEY

Saori's Birthday***

Project Cube

Remember that really rubbish birthday you had when you were seven? (Or whenever - just pick one.) Imagine it repeating over and over like a recurring nightmare. This is the gist of Saori's Birthday, which could be subtitled "Noddy and the Mythical Adventures of Sisyphus" as written by Ayn Rand and directed by David Lynch.

But then add John Moran's painstakingly constructed soundtrack, a symphonic collage of minute recordings which cues in perfectly with the dancers - half the brilliance of this piece takes place in the sound box.

Saori (Saori Tsukada) and her performance partners go through a bizarre futuristic scenario in a range of cartoon movements to describe the devastating pointlessness, pathos and futility of the human condition. She navigates the stage in her mimed bubble and communicates in Japanese with the emotionless voice of "Computer-San" that is "so sorry" it can't save her life. No birth without death. Oh, and happy birthday.

• Until Sat CHRISTINE MADDEN

Urban Playground II***

Various locations

"Parkour", more stirringly known as "l'art du déplacement", exists somewhere between an extreme sport and a dance form. Turning the urban jungle into an obstacle course, it draws from an impressive array of vaulting and balancing, dangling and tumbling, to embody a liberating philosophy: when faced with an impediment, simply scurry up its sheer surface and somersault over the edge.

Confronted with the relatively modest urban overgrowth of the Dublin City Council offices for their first instalment of "micro-choreography", and the need to confine their movements for a stationary audience, Prodigal Theatre and Gravity Style restricted themselves to the concrete slopes and steel railings of an entry ramp. An uninspiring space prompted a dazzling, if crushingly brief, display of rapid vaults, synchronised tumbles and gravity-defying spins, while the seven performers alternated between show-off virtuosity and the unexpected stateliness of dancers at a barre. They may not leave the space transformed, but they certainly know how to make an impression.

• Ends tomorrow PETER CRAWLEY

Whacker Murphy's Bad Buzz**

Filmbase

After a mini-tour encompassing the Edinburgh and Buxton fringe festivals, chancer and football fan Whacker Murphy has come home, lager in hand. A variation on a stereotype, this northside mirror-image of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly struggles to emerge from the shadow of Roddy Doyle and Mark O'Rowe - among many others.

Writer and performer Edwin Mullane enlisted director Tom Hickey to add some movement sequences, helping to animate Whacker's hour-long monologue about a dodgy deal with stolen DVD players that goes wrong.

As he attempts to extricate himself from the mess, a comic sequence of events ensues, involving Kanchelskis the almost-dead dog, a burglary, and a definitely dead body. Although the black humour is often buried in repetition and heavy-handed emphasis, Mullane's engaging performance ensures that the one-dimensional Whacker is a likable gobshite - as he'd say himself, with more expletives.

• Until Sat HELEN MEANY