The second programme in Fishamble's festival of short new plays opens with an odd one; Dreamframe by Deirdre Hines, directed by Jo Mangan. It features two vagrant women named Eternity and Dream, who might be time travellers. An offstage male voice intrudes with recondite statements about time and history. The women briefly tell stories of a failed marriage and a childhood in an institution, but their identities or missions are much too opaque. Obscurity has its place in theatre, but E. M. Forster's dictum is always relevant: Only connect.

Gina Moxley's one-person Tea Set connects with some force. A young woman takes a profitable millennium job granny-minding while an upper-crust family goes on a sun holiday. From this start we are drawn deeply into issues of rape, euthanasia, and suicide. The author extends her story into an unnecessary and over-dramatic final twist, but there is no resisting its penetration and drive, or the riveting performance of Pauline Hutton. Noeline Kavanagh directs.

Finally, Dermot Bolger's Consenting Adults, directed by Jim Culleton, takes the stage. A man and woman meet in a dingy hotel room, through an assignment made through a magazine ad. They clearly intend to play out some fantasies, but have trouble getting, as it were, going. Something in their psychological exchanges rings false, however, and I guessed the substance of the denouement quite early in the play.

This anticipation, for me, substituted anti-climax for the intended surprise of the ending, which is in any event too tortuous and improbable. Barry Barnes and Brid Ni Neachtain play the couple well, but the play clearly has ambitions beyond its grasp.

Runs to Saturday (to book phone 01-4627477); then transfers to City Arts Centre