Irish Timeswriters review Defending the Cavemanat the Tivoli in Dublin and The Irish Concertat the Galway Early Music Festival.

Defending The Caveman, The Tivoli, Dublin

Have you ever noticed how men and women are different? And that those differences, which are the biological, chemical and psychological consequence of millions of years of human evolution, express themselves outwardly in quite distinct behavioural models, most conspicuously within mixed-gender social intercourse scenarios? And that men always leave the toilet seat up? Simon Delaney has a vision of finally uniting the sexes in a common understanding, his one-man show aiming to ease our irreconcilable differences with the balm of observational comedy and his warm, familiar presence. Endlessly likeable and perpetually forgivable as Delaney is, Defending The Caveman contains neither his vision nor his observation.

The show, which has been translated into 30 languages and performed in 40 countries, began life as the stand-up routine of Rob Becker, an American EveryJoe, who first reported his divine visitation from a caveman to Broadway in 1995. His atavistic ancestor helps him explain why men won't ask for directions and why women like to shop. Did Neanderthal man pick up a copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus from a prehistoric Easons? For Easons, read Barnes & Noble, because this production must embed local references into the script as the international franchise is customised for each new territory.

Cuddly Mark Little probably doesn't mention the Luas in the show's UK tour and I doubt that cuddly Honza Holík uses "shitehawk" as a male term of endearment in the Czech production. Cuddly Simon Delaney, however, does a lot of respectable work making these store-bought gender insights seem like his own - "I was at a party . . . " "My wife always says

. . . " - but Delaney, a comic actor asked to play a stand-up comedian, seems alive to the fact that they aren't.

They're not even Becker's: as the Flinstones' set acknowledges, they are the stuff of comedy immemorial, and the universality of skits on how hunters use a remote control like a spear or how gatherers like to talk about their feelings dulls the edge of humour. I found myself nodding, and occasionally laughing, at chauvinistically helpful explanations for shirking domestic chores. But you get the same insight and giggle thumbing through any number of pop-psychology human instruction manuals.

There are two important rules in stand-up comedy, which is traditionally suspicious of the commercial: that it avoids easy cliches and that a stand-up's material always remains his own. The international juggernaut that is Defending The Caveman violates them both. Expect it to be a huge hit. - Peter Crawley

Runs until May 27th

The Irish Consort, Galway Early Music Festival

Piracy is the novel theme of Galway Early Music's 12th annual festival, and the tongue-in-cheek title Pirates of the Corribean has cued a musical diversity ranging from pillaged monasteries to plagiarised concertos.

The opening event was devoted to the infamous Gráinne Mhaol, who combined an exalted position in 16th-century Gaelic society with inflicting sea-borne tyrannies on the inhabitants of Ireland's Atlantic coast.

A narrative thread was provided by author Michael Coady, whose thoughtful and erudite reflections wisely avoided any extravagant claims that the music in this concert would have been familiar to Gráinne herself.

With notable exceptions - such as the monastic chant Felix Hibernian and the airs Cailín ó chois tSiúire mé and Eilionóir a Rúin, which opened the concert - hardly any indigenous Irish pieces from Gráinne's time have been preserved.

Nor is it likely that she ever heard such early Tudor songs as William Cornysh's Blow Thy Horn, or King Henry VIII's Pastime with Good Company.

On her famous visit to Queen Elizabeth in 1593, however, songs by John Dowland (Go Crystal Tears and Come, Heavy Sleep) might well have provided a little courtly diversion from the awkward diplomatic business.

And nothing could recreate Gráinne's own domestic musical experiences more accurately than Siobhán Armstrong's brass-strung Irish harp, on which the accompaniments to the English part songs and lute songs acquired an unfamiliar luminescent quality.

Tenor John Elwes delivered these mostly strophic items with a breezy yet disciplined air that emphasised their schematic attributes - a taut approach somewhat at odds with the elusive charm of Armstrong's harp playing.

With instruments of different sizes, recorder player Laoise O'Brien developed a keen and musicianly sense of line, providing valuable harmonic and rhythmic support to the bass parts of the slower songs in particular. -Andrew Johnstone