What is the stars?

Mute Irregular €6

Vicar Street

***

Wordless soundscapes produced by the latest technological means have an illustrious place in pop, stretching back to Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd. Unfortunately they also include Jean Michel Jarre and all that music from documentaries about evolution. The gap between the two is not as wide as the groups that make up Mute Irregular would like to think, and they all fell into aimless noodling or hollow slabs of harmony at some stage last Friday.

A gig in everything but name, the only thing it had in common with a play was three acts: Echoboy, who succeeded best with some thoughtful moments; Appliance, whose songs are so bare that Philip Glass would find them repetitious and Add N to (x), whose album, Avant Hard, is one of the most annoying series of clicks and whistles ever produced in the name of art. Their live set fared a lot better, and the twin drum kits (very Doctoring The TARDIS) and three synths made an enjoyable racket.

- Aidan Twomey

Burning Dreams

Samuel Beckett Centre, TCD

****

This year's Fringe adventurously opens up cross-currents between theatrical forms, and the inclusion of Team Educational Theatre is an imaginative move. Raising issues of social justice concerning workers' rights, immigration, literacy, women's lives, and poverty, Frances Kay's play combines pedagogical and dramatic interest. As an idealistic young doctor helplessly observes the cycle of poverty in inner-city Dublin in 1941, he is given an opportunity to do something about it. Will he turn the house he has been bequeathed into a TB clinic, a refugee centre, or offer it to one young woman to give her a chance in life?

Martin Murphy directs with clarity and flair, using masks and movement to make the most of the simple staging, and it's rescued from worthiness by the conviction of the performances by Elizabeth Duffy, Mark O'Brien, Jude Sweeney and Aoife O'Beirne.

- Helen Meany

At 1.05, until Saturday

The He and the She of It

The New Theatre

***

Frank Grimes is a dead ringer for Gay Byrne - a bit off-putting when you try to imagine him as James Joyce in his one-man show, subtitled "A Portrait of James Joyce". But his delivery spans Joyce's huge range. Highlights are the fire and brimstone sermon from Portrait, and the Citizen episode in Ulysses, in which Bloom states his simple, wonderful credo: "Love. I mean the opposite of hatred." The tender passage from Finnegans Wake where Anna Livia Plurabelle goes to meet her "cold mad feary father" is Grimes's finest hour.

At times he segues too quickly from short bursts of the oeuvre to rather terse accounts of the life, but a more in-depth performance would have lasted too long. This Joyce taster, which Grimes compiled himself, is well-suited to the intimate dimensions of the New Theatre on Essex Street.

- Katie Donovan

At 8 p.m., until October 16th

The Undertaking

Andrews Lane Studio

****

It would be understandable if someone went "Oh no, not another AIDS play" on hearing of this Quare Hawks production about three gay men and a woman bringing back to Ireland the ashes of a gay friend. "Philadelphia, here we go again," could be typical reaction. But that would be to do an injustice to this quite excellent production with its excellent cast who made up in performance for what may be lacking in the plot's originality. Indeed their composure was doubly impressive in the first scene on opening night, when the stage spots went out and they continued on, guided only by the auditorium lights.

And, though the theme is hardly new, there is some very good dialogue and really good comedy, while the inevitable explosion by the main character Michael (Seamus Moran) is carried off superbly. It is followed by a very moving denouement. Well worth a visit, but this cast - also including Stella Madden, Christopher Kelly, Myles Breen, and Michael O'Sullivan - deserve a better venue. Direction is by Liam Halligan.

- Patsey Mc Garry

At 8.15 p.m., until Saturday

Mojo

Crypt Arts Centre

***

Cooped-up male low-lifes, random violence, abusive verbal exchanges, simmering homoerotic/phobic rage - yes, we've been here before. But if Jez Butterworth's Mojo evokes Tarantino and Mamet, more power to him - the young man can write, e.g.: "God told me, `Keep your mouth shut. Unless your nose is in the trough, in which case open it and chew like 'ell.' "

It's London, 1958, rock 'n' roll is exploding lucratively, and in at least one Soho club it's a dirty little business. This Irish premiere production of an acclaimed new English play is a collaboration of three small Irish companies, and it sees some cracking ensemble acting from a cast of six: they're blessed with the dialogue, but they handle it well and the accents are virtually spot-on. It's only after the interval, as the play shows the seams in its plotting and characterisation, that this production also unravels a bit - with Brent Hearne's static direction doing it no favours.

- Harry Browne

At 8 p.m., until Saturday

Death of a Salesman

Players Theatre

***

Prelude Theatre Company takes on Arthur Miller's tale of failed American family man and salesman Willy Loman, and presents an able telling of this classic rags-to-rags story. Willy is the quintessential American father and husband with a dream to make it rich, but fails hopelessly. He loses everything he believed he ever had, or thought he could have, and his sons inherit Willy's self-deception. The production is carried on the strength of its central performances; the emotional scenes involving the Lomans are electric. Mark Huberman captures with honest poignancy Biff, playing wonderfully off Joel Lewis's gesticulating and complex Willy. Rebecca Daly's subtle depiction of the suffering yet loyal Linda is most intriguing and moving, particularly during the requiem. The realistic set at times hinders the action and prevents a seamless flow between scenes. But the three performances mentioned above are worth seeing.

- Simon Carswell

At 8 p.m. until Saturday

Charlie and Nora

Bewley's, Grafton Street

***

Tina O'Rourke's five-minute two-hander is a simple but effective piece. Basically a conversation between two lonely middle-aged people on a "date", it takes place on a rough-hewn park bench, serenaded by the sounds of ambient traffic - it gradually yields its story and its riches. Both people have complicated pasts, bedded in the secrets and lies of 1950s Ireland, with its cruelties and neglect. Charlie is played by Ger Considine with a stolidity that makes his final revelations all the more affecting, while Bernie Guinane gives Nora a more mercurial quality that adds poignancy to her story of love and betrayal.

If the acting was a little muted at last night's opening, the quality of the writing shone through. This is a quiet, careful production that repays attention.

- Noeleen Dowling

At 6 p.m., until Saturday

Phelo's Pirouette

Bewley's Cafe

****

Every school has a girl like Phelo: pretty, attractive, a born sportswoman and a natural leader, she is idolised by the girls, adored by the nuns - and wreaks terrible damage on her admirers, male and female.

Written and acted by Lisa O'Reilly, this is a witty and at times fascinating monologue about adolescence seen from the perspective of a young woman, Suzanne, home for her sister's wedding. Confronting the demon that is her memory of Phelo, she constructs a vivid little drama that sometimes hits impressive heights. The static quality of the staging is helped by O'Reilly's ebullient presence, and particularly by her chair-bound dance, a ballet brought to near-immobility by the fact that Phelo caused the accident that shattered Suzanne's dreams of being a ballerina. It's a tribute to the suggestive strength of O'Reilly's writing that at times the stage seems peopled by several characters, all of them with something to say.

- Noeleen Dowling

At 8 p.m., until Saturday

Sleuth

Bank of Ireland Arts Centre

***

For fans of the who-dunnit genre, the Cinematic Theatre Company's production of Sleuth offers an enjoyable game of murder and double-cross. Part thriller, part comedy, the Anthony Schaffer play centres on a stylish duel of witty one-liners and clever one-up-manship, where measured pace is crucial. So it is frustrating that one half of the dialogue is at times delivered with such speed as to be incomprehensible and with wild fluctuations of accent. Elsewhere the acting is steady, and Sleuth sustains the tension of a brain-teaser in which fiction and reality become confused. The Bank of Ireland venue and the live music accompaniment set the tone of wealth and intrigue, while the set is presided over by three pop paintings of a green-faced female, the ostensible prize of this game of jealousy. Whether or not you have seen the ultra-smart 1972 film, the play is still detective fiction fun, and as one of the players advises, never speak ill of the deadly.

- Heather Johnson

At 8 p.m., until Saturday

Happy Birthday, Mister Deka D

The Big Tent, Iveagh Gardens

****

If there was an award for best set design in the Fringe, it would be hard to imagine who could beat the one dreamed up by Told By An Idiot for their new play by Biyi Bandele. Cracked down the middle with a bar, chairs and even some toilets sloping off at queasy-making angles, the still centre is a chair on which is seated Mister Deka D (Richard Clews) complete with party hat and balloon.

Lika (Hayley Carmichael) is behind the bar reading a paper until Trisk (Paul Hunter) pops up through the floor without his shoes. What follows is a discourse of confusion, interruption and repetition - phones ring, people sneeze, drills block out all sound, and at times, Lika and Trisk give answers to questions posed some moments before. The pieces of the jigsaw never really fit together, and if you're looking for answers from Mr Deka D when he finally rears out of the chair and shows himself to be as lopsided and broken as the stage, you'll be disappointed. Some great acting by all three.

- Louise East

At 8 p.m., until Saturday

Travellin' Light and Dehydrated

Samuel Beckett Theatre

*****

Parodying the preoccupations of traditional Irish drama has itself become a traditional art form, sometimes tiresome, but Sean Hughes and Owen O'Neill revitalise the cliches in these very strange and funny two-handed half-hour playlets, which won a well-deserved Edinburgh Fringe First in August. There are muddy shades of Martin McDonagh (who ploughs similar ground in a different way) in Travellin' Light's farmyard sibling rivalry, with the lads bickering in the parlour while tyrannical dad lies dying in the kitchen. O'Neill and Hughes also play brothers in the funereal but even more whimsical Dehydrated - which has been expanded into a BBC Radio 4 play. The two comedians are friends as well as co-writers, and it shows - these guys are having fun on stage. The brilliant wordplay is bolstered by some deft physical comedy and the whole effect is of two highly experienced masters of their craft entertaining each other and, of course, a very appreciative audience.

- Deirdre Falvey

At 7 p.m., finishes tonight

Footfalls

Bewley's Grafton Street

***

Samuel Beckett's plangent short play, Footfalls, is ideally suited to a small venue like Bewley's, and Dha Ean Theatre Company, directed by Dermot Healy, manages to control the limited space well. Alone on the small stage, May (Fionnuala Gallagher) walks a repetitive, reassuring and eventually debilitating route of nine steps forward and nine steps back. The only thing to interrupt her pendulum-like trajectory is the voice of her mother, delivered by Sorcha Carroll from off-stage. At times querulous, at times comforting, the mother's voice interrogates but gets few answers and fewer conclusions.

Gallagher's ability to be still while in motion is impressive, as is her look of bewildered despair which beseeches the audience to explain how she ended up here in her mid-40s having "not been out since girlhood". At times her speech, and that of Carroll, are a little too self-consciously measured. Such control is certainly necessary with Beckett's work, but a greater sense of ease with their characters would be beneficial.

- Louise East

At 1.15 p.m., until Saturday

Lunchtime Concert

International Bar

***

An old woman and a young man pass a morning picnic with some incomplete storytelling. Their behaviour is thoroughly unpredictable, as they behave with some sanity one moment and irrationally the next. Their bizarre conduct attracts an eavesdropping birdwatcher from the security of observing their perilous world. His need for order eventually destroys his superficial civility, and a monstrous side to this ornithologist is revealed, giving the couple an ending to their story. It is eccentric even by their standards.

Charlie de Bromhead's young man is frighteningly volatile, changing from a likeable character to a monster in seconds. Claire Connor executes the tawdry woman's peculiarities well, while the descent of the birdwatcher (Nevan Finegan) from normality into fury and back again is convincing. This play illustrates our proximity to a chaotic world within ourselves. The return to order at the finale is relieving. Do not expect a lunchtime concert.

- Simon Carswell

At 6 p.m., until Saturday

Catastrophe

Kilmainham Gaol

****

Kilmainham Gaol - with its bare stone floors, long ascending metal stairways, and catwalks running alongside rows of gloomy dark cells - is a chilling and strikingly apt performance space for Tall Tales Theatre's production of Catastrophe by Samuel Beckett.

Beckett wrote the play following a request to show his solidarity when Czech playwright Vaclav Havel was imprisoned in 1982. Although it's only 20 minutes long, the play's director, Maureen Collender, nonetheless captures the process of slow psychological torturing of a prisoner, the stripping of dignity and then, in the final moment, the human capacity to reclaim this dignity for self. Written as a play within a play, John Lovett is cast as the director who wields a subdued yet fiercely controlling force on his assistant (Deirdre Kinahan) in the final stages of rehearsal for The Protagonist. The audience sits watching this process - positioned close to the action in such a way that almost makes one feel guilty by association. Catch it if you can.

- Sylvia Thompson

At 6.45 p.m. until Saturday

Michael Smiley and others

Laughter Lounge

***

After the gentle witticisms of MC Dara O Briain and the surreal offerings of Ian Coppinger and an on-form Alex Lyons, headliner Michael Smiley was a darker kettle of fish altogether. The abrasive stand-up began with material that was funny and inoffensive - about being a mod in Belfast, wearing a target on his back, how he got married in a Catholic church, had the reception in an Orange hall, with army catering, and then launched into edgier routines that occasionally verged on the psycho: the brutalities of growing up in Belfast; using his 12-year-old son to smuggle drugs; vicious sex; his experiences working as an undertaker. Strong, provocative stuff, well performed, but it left you thinking that instead of just his stand-up, it might have been interesting for the Fringe to feature his latest structured solo show The Parting Glass - which he is performing in London along with the other two sections of his trilogy.

- Deirdre Falvey

***** - brilliant

**** - good

*** - more good than bad

** - more bad than good

* - bad

Fringe information/booking on 1850 3746438