The Dublin Theatre Festival has in recent times fled the wilder shores of theatrical endeavour, an area now controlled, if that's the word, by the overlapping Fringe Festival. Nevertheless, this year's programme, certainly on paper, still offers excitement, not least in its five new Irish plays. The Abbey has Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen, set in his native Donegal during the second World War. Bernard Farrell, fresh from an Abbey hit earlier this year, goes to the Gate with The Spirit of Annie Ross, a spooky comedy. Chris Lee occupies the Peacock with The Map Maker's Sorrow, and actor-author Pat Kinevane offers his second play, The Plains of Enna, at the Tivoli. The Rough Magic company has Boomtown, co-authored by Pom Boyd, Arthur Riordan and Declan Hughes, and said to lower the ceiling on low comedy, in Temple Bar's Meeting House Square. Some heavyweight visitors join the fray, and Australia's Cloudstreet, at SFX City Theatre, should be high in the ratings. It has earned garlands elsewhere, is five hours long and comes with tea and sandwiches. Israel sends its Gesher Theatre to the Olympia with The Village, set in 1940s Palestine where Jews and Arabs lived together. From Britain's Shared Experience company comes a new kind of Jane Eyre, and, from the US, Mabou Mines does Peter and Wendy, an award-winning exploration of the darker side of J M Barrie's Peter Pan characters. Stir in our own Bickerstaffe's revival of Trevor Griffith's enduring Comedians, a couple of new operas and more, and the charm's wound up.