`The West End," begins the strap-line in yesterday's Guardian, "has always looked to Ireland for exciting, provocative theatre." It's a bit of an overstatement, but Michael Billington's review of three shows at the Dublin Theatre Festival should have the scouts over sniffing for more. Billington calls Marina Carr's By The Bog of Cats "proof that there is more to Ireland than the brash Emerald Tiger and confirmation that Carr's Portia Coughlan of 1996 was not just a flash in the pan". Carr has, he writes, "an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real." He agrees that the play might be "mythically overloaded", but adds that "it captures the spectral strangeness of rural Ireland and the idea that the dead co-exist with the living". Patrick Mason's production he describes as "atmospheric", while Olwen Fouere's Hester "has the primal fury of wronged women down the ages".

Though he praises Ben Barnes's production of Friel's version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Gate, and the performances of Niall Buggy, Susannah Harker and Daphne Carroll, he adds that he is tempted to ask what was wrong with the "old" version of the play, "for Friel is not content to surrender to Chekhov, but has imposed himself on the material". He applauds the Societas Rafaello Sanzio's Julius Caesar for "making no pretence" of adhering to the original, and calls it: "hauntingly horrible and horribly haunting, it is the stuff of which festivals are made", adding, "it is bound to be the talking-point of European theatre for many years to come."

Such international recognition for the festival will surely lend fuel to Arts Council director Patricia Quinn's fire when she opens Friday's Theatre Shop at Dublin Castle by talking on Irish Theatre in an International Context: What Next? The Arts Plan of 1995 was calling for an international arts agency, and it is plain that a cultural relations committee with some pocket money from the Department of Foreign Affairs isn't the body to export Irish art. You can still register for the shop on 01-671 9278, and don't forget today's panel discussion on playwriting with Marina Carr, Jim Nolan and Tom Kilroy at 6 p.m. at the Gaiety.

All the Dublin Theatre Festival reviews are available on the Irish Times on the Web: www.irish-times.com/ theatrefestival