Irish Times critics review performances from Art Garfunkel at the Olympia, Dublin; Brendan Grace at the Gaiety, Sergey Khachatryan at the National Concert Hall and Macbeth at the Everyman Palace in Cork

Art Garfunkel at the Olympia, Dublin

We all need somebody to lean on. As half of America's epochal folk-rock duo, Art Garfunkel knew all about strong support. But he is also wary of being overshadowed. Striding forth with his songwriting debut, Garfunkel's new movement matches the sheen of past successes. Introducing co-writers and performers Maia Sharp and Buddy Mondlock to the Olympia stage, the shock-haired Garfunkel may still rely on others. But as his honey-toned tenor completes their three-way harmony on Everything Waits To Be Noticed, he deserves credit for a lilting addition to a store of affecting songs.

Thankfully, though, he isn't coy with his hits or shy of their authorship. Simon may come fourth when Garfunkel lists his five favourite writers, but it is the Latin swell of El Condor Pasa that he begins with, while incorporating Simon's American Tune for political impact. "War is never an instrument of policy," he says to huge applause.

Perhaps it's a fraction more gravelly, but the purity of Garfunkel's voice rarely wavers. Scarborough Fair, Cecilia and Sound Of Silence are musical monuments, never represented with a passing snapshot when only a sweeping vista will do. So it comes as some surprise that, endearingly, Garfunkel has no idea what to do with his hands. There they are, fidgeting with his microphone lead, retracting from awkward gestures or wedged into his pockets as Sharp's alto sax provides jazzy relief.

Similarly, between songs Garfunkel ducks behind rehearsed shtick: a studied double take before Jimmy Webb's All I Know, a cheeky revisioning of S&G's acrimonious split before Mrs Robinson. All entirely excusable when the glorious salve of Bridge Over Troubled Water arrives. A stirringly voiced ode to support, was there ever a singer better suited to a song?

Peter Crawley

An Audience with His Grace at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

Brendan Grace says his wife closes her eyes when they make love because she hates to see him enjoying himself. A burglar fled his house in terror after seeing a framed photograph of the mother-in-law. Japanese people - aren't they tiny? Texans - don't they boast about the size of everything? Aren't curries hot? It's no wonder Gandhi wore a nappy. And did you know that Alfred Hitchcock invented the jockstrap?

Most of his jokes are so ancient, some actually dating back to the Victorian music halls, that one could see his act as a staggering effrontery. Then there are

the ballads: Dublin In The Rare Auld Times and, after a creepy little spiel about how we should all support the Special Olympics, Scorn Not His Simplicity.

But to attack the dinner-jacketed funster as some kind of grotesque creation worthy of Alexei Sayle or the League of Gentlemen misses the point and disrespects his constituency. Grace, who has lived in Florida for years, represents something unchanging in a world gone scary; he is the funny brother who did well here and even better beyond, returning once a year to delight the family with his silly stories and corny songs. It doesn't matter that the folks heard them last year and will hear them again next year. It's the fact that he's back with us for a visit, reminding an audience mostly grown middle-aged with him about those rare auld times when we were younger and the world seemed so full of possibilities, when a couple of drinks, a few gags and the bar of an old song could solve all life's problems.

After the show, Brendan Grace stands in the foyer, glad-handing the punters, recognising faces from way back. "How're ya doing? How's the missus?"

And so the happy crowd straggles out into a Dublin night rent with police sirens and sinister characters lurking in doorways, warmed by an evening with the funny brother that will keep them going until his next visit - a simplicity not to be scorned.

Runs until March 23rd

Stephen Dixon

Sergey Khachatryan at the National Concert Hall, Dublin

^{Classical Symphony - Prokofiev.}

^{Violin Concerto - Khachaturian.}

^{Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky/Ravel}

Sergey Khachatryan hit the headlines three years ago, when he won the eighth Sibelius Violin Competition at just 15. Success continues, and at the National Concert Hall one could see why. What is remarkable about this young man is not his technical prowess but the maturity of his musicianship.

Khachatryan's near-namesake and fellow Armenian Khachaturian has a reputation as a master composer of pictorial ballet scores that are models of folksy, Soviet musical propaganda. Yet this concerto shows that he was also capable of thinking on a symphonic scale.

It needs a persuasive performance - like this one. The solo part's technical challenges were tossed off with the cool aplomb that highlights the music's deeper aspects. Tone was inclined to the quiet side, but for music that is all about melody and the rhythmic complexities of folk music, the playing's shapely animation and unerring definition seemed ideal.

And everything was helped by a fine contribution from the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Alexander Anissimov.

In every respect the concerto was much better than the preceding account of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. The finale had the sparkle one looks for. But elsewhere the playing was a bit ponderous and peppered with bouts of insecurity and poor balance.

Few orchestral arrangements approach the imaginative flair, technical panache and impeccable judgment shown by Ravel in his version of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures At An Exhibition. The performance had its rough moments, but on the whole it had many of the best qualities that Anissimov and the NSO can attain, including potent rhythmic tension, a keen sense of dramatic possibilities and striking definition of orchestral balance and control. As someone who did not know the work said to me at the end: "What a sound!"

Martin Adams

Macbeth at the Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

The ambitious programme notes for this production of Macbeth, by Long Overdue Theatre Company, explain its motivation is to make theatre more cinematic and therefore more appealing to young audiences. Accessibility is all, according to the mantra expressed - here, as everywhere else - in bad grammar and slang. It would be hard to find a better example of the disservice this attitude does to both the play and the audience than this Macbeth.

Apart, possibly, from Kirsty Cox, nobody in the cast understands the dynamics of Shakespeare on stage. We hear recitations, not performances. Effects of sound, light, music and cross-cultural references - the visual enhancements on which Long Overdue prides itself - extinguish any attempt at focus. One line is as unimportant as any other. There is no vocal rhythm, no sense of gesture, no weight of characterisation and, therefore, no authority. And, despite the effects, no atmosphere. Even the narrator introduced to beat a path through this simplest of Shakespearean plots is hard to hear.

Directors Allen J Watts and Eddie Nias need to rediscover that most crucial element of accessibility - respec'.

Runs until Friday, then tours to Athlone, Roscommon and Tipperary.

Mary Leland