AN early Dublin Theatre Festival staged an only partially successful collaboration between poet and playwright Tom MacIntyre and a Dutch contemporary dance group. On Thursday, at Cork's Firkin Crane, beginning a nationwide tour preceding this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, the experiment was repeated more successfully with choreographer John Scott, his Irish Modern Dance Theatre and You Must Tell the Bees, which evolved from Widda, a MacIntyre poem.

Joanna Banks is the widow whose life revolves around her dead beekeeper husband and imprisoned in the hive of her memory. Her dreamlike movement well illustrates MacIntyre's words: "She waited a few days to catch breath, hold, while she might, his step." Daryn Crosbie, Justine Doswell, Aisling Doyle and James Hosty are her memories, as they love and quarrel, sting and are stung, surrounded by the paraphernalia of beekeeping, like smokers and protective veils.

Rossa O Snodaigh, who makes a surprise appearance on stage, provides a score which is more sound than music, all bells and rattles, but with passages of welcome melody as the four younger dancers leap and turn in unison. Soon, however, he returns to the rattle as Doyle and Crosbie shadow box. O Snodaigh also parodies Rimsky Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble Bee while Doswell and Hosty fight off attacking bees. MacIntyre includes a quote from Frances Cornford among his own verse and Scott's choreography echoes Ashton's Facade as the men mimic music hall simultaneous dancers before saddling up and away.

Synan O'Mahony's costumes and Mark Galione's lighting help this interesting hour long unbroken piece.