Cork's Fringe Theatre Festival - an event staged without anything to be a fringe for in a gesture typical of Ali Robertson's free-flowing style of management at the Granary - began on Monday with the Red Kettle production of a new play by Conal Creedon. The brevity of When I Was God is no indication of its quality; a story of a boy's desperate attempts to accommodate the ambitions of his parents is packed into 40 tense, funny and pointed minutes, filled by two players directed by Pat Kiernan.

The father's defence of hurling - "If it was good enough for Cuchulainn it's good enough for you!" - reiterates the machismo of Cork's hidden lanes. The rhetoric here, however, is pared to domestic habits; the result is a web of overheard exhortations, conversation rationalised into assertion, grunt and silencing shout. Liam Heffernan and Pascal Scott shift their characters through Ben Hennessy's spare, bright set; their work, like that of their director and writer, is convincing and memorably skilful.

The Cork Fringe Theatre Festival continues at The Granary until October 31st