Reviewed: Babylon Heights, Funny Money and Petcu-colan,RTECO/Willen

Babylon Heights

Mill Theatre, Dundrum

Within the making of that wonderful Hollywood film, The Wizard of Oz, there is nested a sordid story about the tiny munchkins, cast from the real world of little people. Some 200 were housed in the eponymous hotel, where they were reputed to have lived the orgiastic life.

Four of them, three men and a woman, are re-created by Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh for this play. Victor Grennan's set design is a large, dingy room in which huge pieces of furniture are deployed to diminish the actors, and it does this effectively - but not realistically. The audience now has two nested fantasies, the film background and the action devised by the authors - and it is a fantasy too far.

Kowalski (Dermot Magennis) is a foul-mouthed survivor. Charles (John Fitzpatrick) is a naïve young Englishman, an easy prey for Raymond (David Heap), actor and sexual predator. Philomena (Rachel Rath) is an Irish colleen after the money. It becomes clear that these are one-note roles, metaphors for familiar human weaknesses and vices. There is a thin strand woven into their activities to do with oppression of the undersized, but hardly the golden thread of illumination.

The second act, with the quartet in their film costumes, picks up the pace, if not a theme. It transpires that Raymond has debauched Charles, and brought him to psychological disintegration. Money has been stolen, and the culprit will, it is signalled, become known. Charles commits suicide on set, and the studio seeks to bribe his companions to cover it up as the play trudges towards its conclusion. Directed by Graham Cantwell, the actors, driven to lurid melodrama by the script, do an effective job. But this play is simply a bad idea taken too far. - Runs to Aug 19 - Gerry Colgan

Funny Money

Cork Opera House

It can't be denied that Funny Money by Ray Cooney is a classic of its kind. Or rather that its kind is classic. Claims that this comedy genre is an English version of French farce are, on this evidence, over-stretched; it is simply, crudely, blatantly of an English type, depending on wincing innuendo, double meaning (and in some cases triple meaning) for its jokes and encouraging ludicrous mis-constructions and misunderstandings by all involved, including the audience.

But then, the audience engages happily in this nonsense, lured by clever writing and over-acting brought to a stylish degree of exaggeration. There is absolutely nothing at all original in the piece with its echoes of the wrong box (in this case the wrong briefcase) or of any plot with a variety of mis-appropriated props or people. Here a modest accountant picks up a very immodest amount of money by mistake. His efforts to keep it provide the storyline, all stemming from a lie which accelerates faster than the price of oil. And like oil, it is slick to the point of seeming effortless.

But that takes skill, and the cast, resounding with soap stars (The Bill, Emmerdale, 'Allo 'Allo) are both skilful and hard-working, earning all the laughs and justifying the warm applause - some of which should be for the solid and attractive set for which directors Ian Dickens and Giles Watling offer no attribution. Runs to Aug 12 - Mary Leland

Petcu-Colan, RTÉCO/Willen

NCH, Dublin

Fucik - Entrance of the Gladiators. Binge - The Watermill. Wieniawski - Polonaise brillante No 2. Delius - On hearing the first cuckoo in spring. Wieniawski - Légende. Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No 2

This was one of those concerts in which all the music was pleasing, without startling highs or lows. The rhythmic style of Fucik's Entrance of the Gladiators - driven yet flexible - was a worthwhile reminder that this piece was designed not for its present-day associations, the entry of clowns in a circus, but as a military march with oodles of central-European oompah.

Flexibility, one of the consistent strengths in Niklas Willen's conducting of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, was especially valuable in two works by the Polish violinist-composer Wieniawski. The Polonaise brillante No 2 is one of those bendy pieces that test the orchestra's exactness of accompaniment, as well as the soloist's exactness of technique. There were no worries about either of these.

It was refreshing to hear Ioana Petcu-Colan play the polonaise with so little ego. Her flair made you aware that it requires brilliant violin technique; but there was no striving to make it sound impressive. Likewise, Wieniawski's Légende had a warmth of tone and a caressing style of phrasing that suited this amorous present from the composer to a young woman.

There was also some fine solo playing from the orchestra's front desk in Binge's bon-bon The Watermill; and throughout the concert, the RTÉCO was in responsive form, with some subtle orchestral balance between wind, brass and strings and, in two works in particular, some strikingly coloured string playing.

Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No 2 and Delius's On hearing the first cuckoo in spring depend on characterful playing to convey their extra-musical purposes.

The warmth and homogeneity of the string sound, its range of colour and volume, and the ease with which conductor and orchestra ranged from speech-like flexibility to poised- and-steady dancing, from urgent energy to languid repose, made these pieces consistently pleasing. - Martin Adams