The latest reviews from the festival

Lenka's Wardrobe **
Bewley's Café Theatre

Eve (Gene Rooney) is a deluded PR gal living in Phibsborough and obsessed with fashion, in this unfocused one-woman show, adapted from a short story by Bridget O'Connor. Lenka was Eve's deceased tenant, who'd arrived with a wardrobe full of clothes made from animal-skins - tiger, rhino, monkey - which Eve commandeers after Lenka's mysterious death. Intended as a black comedy on a controversial rag trade using materials from protected wildlife, it's neither black enough nor funny enough to convince.

The best gags are about Eve's PR- girl-about-town life with its Dublin in-jokes. Lenka's Wardrobe can't decide what it wants to be - a satire of the PR world or a satire of the more extreme side of the rag trade. Rooney gives a likeable, gallant performance but is defeated by a meandering script, and static direction that has her feet virtually stuck to one spot for the entire 45 minutes. ( Until Sept 15)
Rosita Boland

Les Chiche Capon's Cabaret ****
The New Theatre

Is Philip's dancing beautiful? Firmin, our MC for the night, asks us to find beauty in Philip's ungainly loping because he is a nice guy and pleads for our understanding of inner and outer beauty. That's the half-serious undertone as these three clowns present a rough and not ready music-hall cabaret. Individual acts are barely applaudable with a fainting magician, scrambling juggler and fraught MC leading to an amusingly unravelling performance. But, like The Muppet Show, it's the backstage drama and suddenly-improvised fillers that are the real story.

Somewhat traditionally, the characters grow through failure under the cynical eye of musician Ricardo, the straight-faced sidekick, until Firmin finally loses control, respect and finds his own beauty. Funniest when, at its most physical, the act throws a camp raised eyebrow past the fourth wall at our own happiness. Even if you don't need to find beauty, just go to fulfil Philip's dream of being an otter. (Ends today)
Michael Seaver

Married to the Sea *****
T36 

Set in Galway when the Claddagh was still a working fishing community, this hugely impressive first full-length play from Shona McCarthy (who also directed) is a beautiful, lyrical and haunting fable of loss. Using the unpredictable and ever-changing sea as an exterior metaphor for the interior turmoil and changes that are happening in a fisherman's family, this cleanly directed production from Dragonfly is both utterly compelling and often very funny. The fisherman's young daughter, Jo (Siobhan Donnellan, right), is the conduit through which we observe the gradual breakdown of her superstition-laden family life. Her father is seduced by the sea, her bed-ridden grandmother tells stories to the dead, and her mother (Paula Dempsey) buries dead things to atone for the child she could never bury. Although Fiachra Ó Dubhghaill plays his multiple parts with skill, humour and conviction, the show belongs to Donnellan's pitch-perfect performance. Go see it. ( Until Sept 16)
Rosita Boland

Men of Steel ***
Smock Alley

Warning: don't sit in the front row, Men of Steel is in town! Three vocally dexterous, anarchic cutlery clashers, armed with a couple of cookie-cutters, a disembowelled toaster, a jungle of shady looking broccoli and an alarmingly phallic leek (or maybe it was a turnip), create a kind of cartoonish culinary mayhem in what surely must be the messiest show on the Fringe. The actor/puppeteers - who have brought their ghoulishly gastronomic family entertainment all the way from Australia - endured a scant opening-night audience, with only two children in the house (both mine), who enjoyed hurling bits of watermelon back at the performers and who didn't object to the contents of a can of dog food flying around. It's a shame family shows have been lost in the festival's generously sized programme - one with the word "children" written on top might have brought a young audience to this audacious food fight. Go, but not in your glad rags. ( Until Sept 23)
Hilary Fannin

The Stuart Davis Show  ****
Bewley's Café Theatre

Stuart Davis is a sole trader who runs the gamut of existential angst (writ large on a video screen, in the company of his cloned selves), razor-sharp improv and a ragbag of quite beautiful songs. He airs his fixation on death and sex (along with their point of intersection, necrophilia) with grandiose pronouncements, relishing their bullet-like propulsion from brainwave to spoken word. Despite his minuscule audience, Davis manages to bask in the eiderdown of a voluminous script with wide-eyed Stipe-like enjoyment.

Lurking amid the minutiae of his observations on life and the universe are some startling insights, particularly on the gaunt and fragile 'Nothing In Between'. With his Forest Whittaker-like drooping eyelid, and his red-hot comparisons between life in Europe and his home turf of the US, Davis pulls off that most elusive of party tricks: redefining narcissism and incest so succinctly that even the gods were grinning. ( Until Sept 15)
Siobhán Long

Titus ***
Carmelite Hall

Aidan Harney's dramatic monologue, played by Sean McNally, tells the true story of a Carmelite priest and mystic who was killed in Dachau by the Nazis. Titus Brandsma was Dutch, son of a farmer, and made his way through the church ranks, against bureaucratic opposition, to become an eminent theologian and university administrator.

Then came Hitler and the Nazis, to whom he was implacably opposed. He toured Europe and Germany preaching opposition to their racist outrages, and was arrested and sent to the concentration camp. There, he suffered terribly, and died by lethal injection.

The actor traces his life, moving back and forth between youth and final years. He plays Titus and other characters, particularly in the camp, with conviction. This is a fervent testimony, more tract than theatre, to a saintly man of incredible courage, moral and physical. ( Until Sept 15)
Gerry Colgan

The Tragedian ****
Back Loft

In January 1814, the struggling actor Edmund Kean's performance of Shylock catapulted him to fame. Before then, the trials of his picaresque life were so taxing that, shortly before this appearance, he declared "If I succeed, I shall go mad".

Prodigal Theatre Company's production The Tragedian Trilogy (Part I), invokes the frenetic energy that kept Kean striving for acclaim. Written and performed by Alister O'Loughlin and directed by Miranda Henderson, this animated one-man performance was wonderfully energetic and physical and included a Mary Poppins's bag-like trunk that held everything and served as every kind of prop.

Presented in the challenging but atmospheric Back Loft space, the performance in the round for an intimate audience had individual spectators doubling as extra characters, providing a bit of colour and amusement - this reviewer sat in as Mary, Kean's adored then reviled wife. It's not often a critic gets a rose and a gallant kiss on the hand from the cast. Why ever not? ( Ends today, The Tragedian Trilogy plays in full on Sunday afternoon)
Christine Madden