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Van Spaendonck, Leonard, Tinney

NCH John Field Room, Dublin

Schumann - Fantasiestücke Op 73. Haydn - Variations in F minor Hob XVII: 6. Debussy - Violin Sonata. Bartók - Contrasts.

This programme in the National Concert Hall's ongoing Summer Sounds at Lunchtime series brought together the talents of Belgian clarinettist Ronald Van Spaendonck and two Irish musicians, violinist Catherine Leonard and pianist Hugh Tinney.

The programme was devised to give each player a moment in the sun, Van Spaendonck in a finely-balanced account of Schumann's Op. 73 Fantasy Pieces, Leonard in a delicately-glowing, liquid account of Debussy's late Violin Sonata.

Tinney was a light-fingered partner in the Schumann, and the give-and-take between the violin and piano in the Debussy, as the two players shadowed and lead each other, was often magical.

Tinney was the only one to get the stage entirely to himself, for a classically reserved performance of Haydn's Variations in F minor, a substantial work of great expressive depth, which the composer, tongue-in-cheek, described as Un piccolo divertimento.

The three players took the stage together only at the end, for a deft, sharp, intimate, sparkling account of the Contrasts Bartók wrote for Benny Goodman, the clarinettist having been secretly egged on to the commission by the composer's friend and sometime musical partner, violinist Joseph Szigeti.

Michael Dervan

Mummenschanz Next

O'Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College, Dublin

Last April DV8 came to the O'Reilly Theatre with super-duper computer holograms. On Monday the Swiss group Mummenschanz came with cardboard boxes. As any present-giving parent can attest, it's the cardboard box that often entertains long after the technological thrill wanes. Mummenschanz have played with the cardboard box for over 30 years now, both literally and metaphorically. Ripped open at the seams and flattened, a box looks at us, waves, laughs, joins four other boxes in a jumping quintet before whooshing the others off-stage.

The box is just one of a cast of blobs, sponges and squiggles to whom we ascribe human traits as they simply move together or apart. The skill and dexterity of the four performers gets lost in the darkness behind the illusion, but you still can't contain the awe at the hidden movement that must be needed to stack three human-size sponges on top of each other or bring two long lines together and create a dancing person.

Just when you think you have guessed how the person inside the giant pillow is buffeting it around - imagine someone putting a cover on a duvet when they're drunk - it fools you and teeters right over the edge of the stage to the delight and horror of those in the front row.

But Mummenschanz Next is more than tricks. Within the simplicity and almost old-fashioned stagecraft is a belief that art, and life, can be distilled to the most basic communications about love and conflict. The mini-fables enacted by objects cajole us into finding meaning in the movement. By extension we see art in the everyday, and that's a point made not just for the kids.

After over 30 years the company is overloaded with superlatives, not just from the sour-faced critics turned helpless gigglers, but from audience members who literally can't stop themselves blurting loud praise during the show.

Runs at the O'Reilly theatre until Aug 13 (bookings on 01-8721122), and at the Cork Opera House Aug 18-20 (bookings on 021-4270022)

Michael Seaver