Reviewed today are After Opium at the Project Cube, Dublin, Don Giovanni at Monksgrange, Co Wexford and  Bernadette Kiely: Local Time at the Catherine Hammond Gallery, Co Cork

After Opium

Project Cube, Dublin

This new play is by Elske Rahill, an English literature student at Trinity College, and it reflects both her youth and her inexperience. If theatre is designed to communicate with an audience in a meaningful way, this must be something else. What that might be is a matter for puzzled conjecture.

It has three characters, a man and two women, all about 20 years old. They are equipped with interwoven and sometimes overlapping monologues in which they comment on their own experiences and on life in general. The pace of narration and the opacity of much of the dialogue often make the content incomprehensible. When it is reasonably clear in meaning, it is unimpressive.

Laura (Marianne McCullan) is a disillusioned girl who loves to dance, preferably by herself. When the others describe her she is a luminous presence in the nightclubs. There are sexual encounters, in which she participates like a zombie, part of and yet detached from the action. Sinead (Lynn Enright) is auditioning for a film, and is the object of an attempted seduction by a one-time teacher of hers. She has an alcoholic mother and an absentee father.

Finally, there is Brendan (Domhnall O'Donoghue), a barman who, fed up with his current girlfriend, has stumbled into a homosexual relationship with a friend. This, as he repeatedly says, has his head wrecked. He winds up having burned all his intimate bridges.

There is no theatrical tension in these confidences directed to us. The trio speak of themselves and of each other in a spate of simile and metaphor, disconnected from normal speech and difficult to follow. Nothing important is said or can be gleaned from, or between, the lines. At one stage the trio cover their hands and then faces with a blood substitute taken from a basin, for no discernible reason other than to lend a touch of melodrama.

The author directs her own play, finding no way out of her self-constructed puzzle. It is, I fear, back to the drawing board.

Runs until August 14th

- Gerry Colgan

Don Giovanni

Monksgrange, Co Wexford

Opera in the Gardens at Woodbrook House in the lee of the Blackstairs Mountains has become a regular summer fixture in Co Wexford, with picnics on the lawn, gaily decorated marquees and countryfolk in their best finery. For the past three summers, the English-based touring company Opera À La Carte has come to Ireland to stage opera in congenial surroundings such as Woodbrook and Loughcrew, in Co Meath, reminiscent of (and dare I say better than?) the famous Glyndebourne event.

Woodbrook's owners, Giles and Alexandra FitzHerbert, have now joined with friends and neighbours who live in similar great houses to form Blackstairs Opera, which will stage annual summer operas by rotation. Profits left over after costs will be donated to a local charity.

This year it was the turn of Monksgrange, in Rathnure, the home of Rosie and Jeremy Hill, with Mozart's old spine-chiller Don Giovanni to look forward to. Last Sunday was one of those perfect summer evenings that occur so rarely, the gardens at Monksgrange were at their magnificent best and chilled champagne was the preferred tipple.

Guests in glamorous formal attire walked up the drive with picnic baskets, wine coolers and the family silver to grace the tables. Some adventurous local rakes dressed up as characters in the opera, to the amusement of guests milling about on the lawns.

While it was a convivial social occasion, the music was taken seriously, and the standard of singing was exceptionally high in this most demanding of operas, with some young singers clearly on the verge of major careers. Michael Lewis sang the part of Don Giovanni with power and authority, although he used gestures to convey malevolence that verged on caricature. As Donna Elvira, Katie Van Kooten - who is due to substitute for Angela Gheorghiu in Covent Garden's La Rondine in November - sang her difficult role flawlessly but lacked the passion so central to this character.

Katri Paukkunen, as Donna Anna, was excellent both verbally and emotionally, while the young Irish artist Michelle Sheridan pleased greatly with her singing and stole the show with her superb acting. Jochem van Ast, as Leporello, was a perfect foil to the Don, although stagewise he sometimes appeared more aristocratic than his master. An elegant Don Ottavio, a Masetto whose only fault may have been occasional overinterpretation, and a suitably sombre Commendatore completed the well-balanced cast.

The production was in the round with minimal props, and the acoustic in the marquee was very good indeed. The small accompanying ensemble did their best with a score where the tonality, harmony and rhythmic impulse cry out for a full orchestra. The high musical standard of the production and magical surroundings on a perfect summer's evening made this a night to remember - and at less than half the cost of a similar evening at Glyndebourne.

- Colman Morrissey

Bernadette Kiely:

Local Time

Catherine Hammond Gallery, Co Cork

Although the newly established Catherine Hammond Gallery, in Glengarriff, may be somewhat isolated from large towns and cities, the exhibition space is as sophisticated as any other in the country.

The current exhibition is by the Kilkenny-based artist Bernadette Kiely, who is showing paintings inspired by her travels around the north Co Mayo coast. Her interest in the landscape focuses on two specific features, gorse and bog cotton, which provide the spur in each of the 16 paintings on show here. The artist is resolute in her investigation of these signatures of the Irish landscape.

The format of the paintings is fairly consistent, in that the yellow of the gorse and the white of the bog cotton form the focal point of each composition. Around this Kiely subtly suggests distant features of hills and coastline. The sensation of the foliage texture and the aerial perspective of the surrounding landscape is captured convincingly but realised with great economy, avoiding mere replication. The surfaces are the lynchpin, as a lively but not loaded impasto allows surer integration between foreground and background.

Emphasis on texture and surface finds extension in certain works as the spatial vista takes less prominence, allowing abstraction to come to the fore. This is achieved simply by zooming in on the bog cotton, with its irregular amorphous form and light tones, which contrast against the dark earth.

The shapes are suggestive of cellular structures or cumulous forms, which tallies well with the artist's interest in the underlying theme of regeneration and ancient growth of plant species.

- Mark Ewart