All Werk and plenty of play

A bizarre amalgam of night club, cabaret and riotous performance in the austere surroundings of the national theatre? PETER CRAWLEYtries to find his bearings at Werk

SLASHED GOLD curtains and wittily subversive video installations. Fake grass on the floor and a Virgin Mary grotto in the nook. An ode to head shops. A verbatim recital of Pat Kenny's Frontlineheckler – set to dance. Periodic eruptions of electro-pop. When one punter at Werk – the first and deeply unlikely late-night performance art club (or cabaret, if you like) staged by Thisispopbaby in the foyer of the Peacock Theatre – expresses his amazement about the transformation of the place, the response he receives is not uncommon: "Yeah? What's it usually like?"

This begs a reasonable question: who goes to Werk?The audience – if that's the right word – for the first of three events, staged on the second Saturday of the month, are young, energetic and unfairly gorgeous; they are seemingly more au fait with the subversive, trashy charge of the Electric Picnic tent curated by Thisispopbaby's Phillip McMahon and Jenny Jennings than the more sedate and (these days) infrequently used Peacock.

How McMahon and Jennings got the keys to the venue in the first place seems to have been a combination of nerveless chutzpah on their part and nerveless bluff-calling on the Abbey director Fiach Mac Conghail's part. Among jokey projections of a religious shopping channel called Pray TV,or a drinks menu that lists the cost of "Salvation" among prices of cans and long necks, looms a bright neon sign bearing the legend "De Chirico". How many clubbers will recognise it as a prop salvaged from the Abbey's production of Marina Carr's Marble, or notice the chaise longue requisitioned from An Ideal Husbandidling by the entrance? Does it matter?

The Abbey, like most theatres, could use an infusion of new blood and Thisispopbaby provides it. Although the performances at Werk are far from traditional, the capacity crowd circulates comfortably from a Mark O’Halloran reading to an accidentally discovered and captivating installation performance from Making Strange’s Megan Riordan.

How it might respond to the Peacock itself is never gauged; the auditorium remains closed throughout. Instead, the performances that make an impression on the small platform in the foyer each abide by the pummelling logic of club culture. Most successfully, the young company Theatre Club's vigorous excerpts from Stole Your Clock Radio What the Fuck You Gonna Do About Itmanage to both rise above the din of the crowd and feed into it.

Things are harder for quieter sequences, with even the pulsing poetry of Andrea Irvine's excerpt from Mark O'Rowe's Terminustaking place over a background chorus of chatting and shushing. A better sound system or a more considered schedule could perhaps call the riotous fun to order.

Elsewhere, the arch delivery of the night's compère, Neil Watkins, stills the clamour, as does the studied vulnerability of Ciarán O'Melia, singing unaccompanied and largely unattired. It falls to James O'Neill, the singer of electro-pop act Bitches With Wolves– resplendent in shorts and a gold-emblazoned bolero jacket – to whip the frenzy up again.

Whether Werkneeds the Abbey or the Abbey needs Werk is hard to decide. But as the small hours beckon the ludicrously fun night to its end, Fiach Mac Conghail is introduced to James O'Neill and welcomes him warmly to the national theatre. "Oh!" replies a pleased and slightly surprised O'Neill. "Is this the national theatre?"