Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events.

Rufus Wainwright, Vicar Street, Dublin

Faced with an ensemble wearing more brightly coloured stripes than a Bridget Riley painting, the audience can do one of two things: walk out en masse, tut-tutting at such a garish display of bad taste, or wilt under the dubious charms of such haberdashery hell. Needless to say, when Rufus Wainwright is the leader of such an assault to the senses, we all wilt.

Wainwright has by this stage far removed himself from beneath the shadows of his parents (singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III) to the point that he no longer has to reference them in order to gain a foothold. In the last 10 years, he has released records that contain truly original material, his blend of singular pop/rock and borrowed operatic/classical flavours - covered with the soothing cream of his voice - resulting in songs that might occasionally overreach but which rarely come across as overbearing.

The show is expertly paced and sectioned into two parts: Rufus with his fine band (which included Dubliner Gerry Leonard, former guitarist with early 1990s Irish band Hinterland and more recently a member of David Bowie's band) filleting his solo albums (but mostly his latest, Release the Stars) for material; Rufus at the piano, periodically screwing up but making up for it by being the epitome of slick wit and professional, and singing in such good voice that you could, on occasion, hear the proverbial pin drop.

After the interval, Rufus returns, divested of stripes but attired in lederhosen, looking for the most part like a grown-up boy scout in search of his troop. He's unusual in pop star terms in that he doesn't have hit singles (you could argue that he doesn't have hit albums, either), which means that his shows live or die on the overall strength of his songs.

There are no deaths here tonight, however; rather, it's a pulsating show of terrific tunes (including Leaving for Paris No 2, The Art Teacher, Oh What a World, Sanssouci and Tiergarten), more than several camp moments, a mini-tribute to Judy Garland (If Love were All, Foggy Day in London Town) and a kind of warmth you could leave the venue with and keep with you for hours. - Tony Clayton-Lea

Ani DiFranco, Hamell on Trial, Tripod, Dublin

Checking the pulse of a nation like a maniacal John Lennon, Hamell on Trial launched incendiary attacks on the politics of mediocrity with gobsmacking, spirit-shocking, crystalline clarity. He makes Dr Evil look like a mild-mannered public schoolboy as he cuts a swathe through the self-serving agenda that's propelled the US into a vortex of hostilities. Ed Hamell's greatest strengths are his razor-sharp wit and his uncanny ability to call it like it is, whether his subject is Republican obfuscation, the crime against humanity that was Bill Hicks's early death, the horrors of folk music, or the sheer, unadulterated joy of oral sex. He relished the rapt attention of his audience, issuing salvo after salvo with the sole purpose of rerouting their brainwaves to a path that just might illuminate some of the madness and gorgeousness of life in the noughties.

Hamell on Trial is a naked reality check, laden with observations so sharp they cut through weak illusions of contentment like a chainsaw through butter.

The warm-up said it all. DiFranco hasn't lost any of her own razor-sharp wit, nor has she sacrificed her sensuality to the altar of motherhood, since giving birth last January. She's a ball of energy, radiating heat and light from the moment she steps on stage, guitar in hand. She wastes no time in casting her keen eye over the follies of her home place, taking repossession of the "P" word, as she calls it ("patriot" to you and me), reminding us of its origins in struggle and strife, far from the muzzled shadow it inhabits these days.

DiFranco reaches places other artists never even conceive of. She's a ball-breaking, uncompromising commentator who just happens to also have a deliciously husky pair of vocal cords and a grinding, percussive guitar style to match her combustible repertoire. Ricocheting from the slo-mo of Lag Time to the matted sensuality of Manhole, the anxiety-laden Subconscious and the sheer, wide-eyed poetry of Grand Canyon, DiFranco lives the rhetoric that no longer populates the political arena as it once did, when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy held sway. With Todd Sickafoose on grinding double bass and Alison Miller on drums and backing vocals, this was an infusion of reality, laced with healthy doses of idealism, and delivered with DiFranco's customary, unabated brilliance. - Siobhán Long

Shopping for Shoes, Half Moon Theatre, Cork

Tossed into the theme of Shopping for Shoes like dressing on a salad is a reminder that shoes in today's international market can be the products of sweatshops or child labour. And the message adds a certain flavour, sharpening the appealing if limited script by playwright Tim Crouch. This concerns the efforts of a teenage girl, Siobhán, wearer of Whole Earth and Fairtrade sandals, to attract the attention of Seán, a fanatic whose devotion to shoes might challenge a centipede.

On a set consisting entirely of boxes and their contents, Christina Strachan indicates these and related characters through their footwear as much as through their mannerisms. Her playing has charm and vivacity, and it wrings as much significance as possible from a plot that isn't very significant and that might have been originally aimed at a slightly less knowing audience than senior schoolboys and girls. A skilful actress, Strachan manages the shift from her conversational welcome to the group into actual performance with assurance; the problem with her direct approach is that it invites - or provokes - answers, as when she wonders about the popular pronunciation of Nike and her audience responds with "Adidas". Her ability to control this liveliness by imposing and sustaining her own allows the cleverly pointed little play to make its statement, even though the 45-minute production, directed by Douglas Irvine for Visible Fictions from Scotland, might be better suited to a classroom than a theatre. - Mary Leland

Ends tomorrow, then tours