The Cork Midsummer Festival is a much- needed carnival for the city, from fun in the park to DIY circus, to theatre in unusual sites, writes Mary Leland

WHATEVER ELSE might be said in favour of the Cork Midsummer Festival - and there's a lot to be said in its favour - it can't be denied that it brings out the young audiences in their good-humoured thousands. And, for young, read beginning with the soother brigade; opening with the Lord Mayor's Picnic in the Park, this public carnival in sunny weather in the flowery, tree-shaded, riverside Fitzgerald's Park was the kind of family event which induces a widespread sense of enjoyment, expectation and tolerance even of the unexpected. The question for festival director William Galinsky was whether that mood could last for the entire three weeks. So far it has been maintained with such enthusiasm that the new presentations of this final week are awaited with an eagerness equal to that of the first.

There's no doubt about it though, Cork needs its carnivals. This is a city which, on the evidence of this particular festival, has lost its panache. The only glamour visible for the past fortnight was at the Taste of Cork exposition, run at the former city jail with an irony which was not lost on the city's new Lord Mayor. As Anthony Worrall Thompson, Ross Lewis, Gino d'Acampo and what looked like all the Allens led more than 80 food, drink and, especially, lifestyle participants, Cllr Brian Bermingham noted that the cuisine was of a different standard than that enjoyed by "the souls who passed inside these walls before us". Hundreds from Cork dressed up for this occasion and there was a sprinkling of Michelin stars, politics (Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin was in attendance), and such local celebrity as the city can muster.

SO THAT WAS FUN, but fun is a difficult construction, best exemplified this time around first by The End of the Linefrom Asylum Productions at the Granary (reviewed last week), then by Aesop's Fabulous Foibles and Fables, a clever compilation for youngsters presented by Theatre Makers at the Firkin Crane Arts Centre, and then by Sensazione, the theatrical fairground devised as a DIY experience by Laika and Time Circus at the Mardyke (and in Clonmel and Letterkenny later this month).

Do it yourself, as exemplified by these collaborative, and inspired, Dutch companies means that nothing moves unless you push it. The enthusiasm with which youngsters and, eventually, their parents, guardians and friends entered into the slightly punishing spirit of this opportunity for daring and hilarity was enjoyment in itself. And while the small-hours call for Spencer Tunick's nude photographic assembly at Blarney Castle might not be everyone's idea of entertainment, there were more than enough willing citizens swearing afterwards to having had one of the happiest, if chilliest, experiences of their life by stripping off in the dawn's early light.

British Radio 4 broadcaster Julian Fox at the Half Moon Theatre stripped off a little more chastely in You've Got to Love Dancing to Stick to It, a title which has nothing at all to do with this monologue on a local outdoor swimming pool at which his character, if it is he, spends all summer. With a fading voice, and perhaps a fading consciousness, Fox doesn't do to-camera video as much as into camera; his relaxed style (to be seen also at the Kinsale Arts Week from July 17th to 19th) dwindles into a lethargy which somehow still manages to be a kind of slow-release comedy.

Crowds flocked to the Spiegeltentfor its mix of midsummer all-sorts, from aspirant tones in the Yourah Langer!auditions for the fortnight-long The Last Resortto tea dances, afternoon bingo, Red Hot Gypsy Soul, Camille O'Sullivan, and a line-up including Faust and, fresh from their new album, Jodavino, as well as Rulers of the Planet presenting Disco Boogie for Death Rockers, and with Frank and Walters's Grand Parade.

Yet to come are Mick Flannery and his guests (tonight), jazz from The Bones of Cork and then The Fall on Thursday. But there was also Circo-Copia for the buggy league, entranced by jugglers and clowns and loose as opposed to tight-rope walking. Bad weather cheated us of the second performance of the Bicycle Balletby Cork Bike Performers, but there was dance of a different kind at the Firkin Crane from Croí Glan, the Integrated Dance Company whose choreographer Tara Brandel and wheelchair-bound dancer Rhona Coughlan have created a programme of ballet, music and speech sequences of considerable power and, it has to be said, surprise.

Given the pressure of time and bi-location involved in management of the festival programme there are gaps in this catalogue of events so far, most regrettably perhaps the internationally acclaimed Victoria with Propositions 1 2from Miet Warlop, Sofie Durnez, Kurt Stockman and Adriaan Verwée. But Storybearfrom Púca Puppets opens today at the Unitarian Church while Make Me Stop Smokingis at the Half Moon Theatre, the Hunger Mountain Boys are at the Pavilion next Saturday and Robodock from Amsterdam is at the IAWS warehouse on Centre Park Road on Friday and Saturday to bring the festival to an appropriately spectacular end.

But it also had a spectacular middle: if it is possible to raise the roof of a cathedral then the very rafters of St Fin Barre's Cathedral should have been shaking during the Irish African Gospel Choir competition, an afternoon of singing which managed to be both ardent and exuberant with the suitably-robed Lord Mayor swaying along with the audience and the winners from the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Blanchardstown taking home a cheque for €1,000.

WHILE THIS YEAR'S drama strand had a touch of Dutch exteriors (Sensazione, Robodock, Braakland, Victoria) it might also cause Cork City Council to consider a heavier investment in the festival, given the way in which locations emerge as immense theatrical opportunities which, as with Hammergrin's impressively staged presentation of K: the Iowa Projectat the Old Distillery, reveal unusual, historic or otherwise fascinating aspects of the urban landscape. Big productions like this, like the intriguing Braakland, or Corcadorca's compelling The Hairy Ape(both already reviewed) take on extra dimensions, almost an extra significance, from such revelations, as a place becomes a landscape, a site expands into a vista and grim old structures loom into lovely, forgotten perspectives.

But it is also with venues that the city's corporate loss of panache comes in. The authentic, if excusable, damp and gloom of the Unitarian Church may be at least suited to the topic of Asylum Productions' delightfully clever Cleaner, but the festival shows up the fact that more traditional venues are unforgivably shabby and so is much of the behaviour of their patrons. Marvelling at the amount and nature of the food and drink being consumed by the small schoolchildren during Aesop's Fablesit had to be remembered that adults at the Opera House do exactly the same; at least this theatre is beginning its interior refurbishment shortly but it still allows late-comers in, along with all the sustenance they require to see them through, for example, the Abbey Theatre's touring production of The Seafarer.

At the Firkin Crane the floor shows all the signs of conspicuous consumption. The Granary is clean but newly uncomfortable, and the extraordinarily heavy doors to the auditorium have to be opened by each individual patron. The Everyman Palace is changing its noisy seating, but its patrons suck like babies on bottles of water or soft drinks which means they also have the pleasure of crackling the empty plastic bottles throughout a performance. And, everywhere, feet are for seats and the best way to reach your space is to climb over the row in front or behind it. So while some observers missed the inclusion of a classical music component in the Midsummer Festival this year, there were a few who also mourned the off-stage lack of class.

The Cork Midsummer Festival continues until Saturday.  www.corkmidsummer.com