The Party

For Anu’s production of The Party, Bewleys upstairs has morphed into a sophisticated drawing room, with elegant furniture, pretty lighting and even a piano. It’s the backdrop for this absorbing, pitch-perfect adaptation of Chekhov’s short story, finely wrought by Caitriona Ni Mhurchu and Sophie Motley and brought to life in Motley’s accomplished production. Moving beyond the confines of the stage, Ni Mhurchu embodies the role of Olya, heavily pregnant, weary and overwhelmed by the heat and noise of her husband’s birthday party as she recalls the events of that momentous day. The shallowness of the guests, her handsome husband flirting with a pretty young girl, her own complicit hypocrisy, the hints of darkness beneath the surface, she portrays it all with an unflinching candour, by turn passionate and languid. And in true Chekhovian style, it ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Til Sat 20 Feb @lunchtime www.bewleyscafetheatre.com

Off Plan

The excellent RAW productions are back at Project with the world premiere of Off Plan, a new adaptation of Aeschylus' The Oresteia by Simon Doyle. It’s not the first time Doyle has taken on the ancient Greeks, his anarchic Oedpius Loves You was a big hit for PanPan a couple of years back. This time around he uses Aeschylus' powerful text to check the pulse of (post)modern Ireland, making us take stock of where we are and how we got here, exploring themes of power and morality, justice and revenge, and our identity in a globalised world. Off Plan was commissioned by RAW and developed through series of workshops - a bit of a departure for Berlin-based director Rachel West, whose previous work has largely focused on introducing Irish audiences to cutting-edge European playwrights. Anthony Brophy, Maebh Cheasty, Alan Howley, Paul Mallon, Emma McIvor, Gary Murphy and Mary Murray make up a fascinating ensemble. Opens Thur 11 Feb til Sat 27. www.projectartscentre.ie

Hang on

Also hitting the road are Portico Quartet, taking to the highways and byways courtesy of Music Network. Mercury prize nominees for their debut album Knee Deep In The North Sea back in 2008, this East London foursome create a sound that floats between jazz and contemporary music with a combination of soprano and tenor sax, double bass, drums and hang. Hang on, what’s that? A sort of double wok instrument that’s both percussive and melodic and produces a marimba-like sound with echoes of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, giving a hazy, hypnotic edge to everything they play. Fresh from Australia, you can catch them at Dublin Castle Coach House on Tue 16 before they head out across the country. www.musicnetwork.ie www.porticoquartet.com

It's Hamlet

Second Age are on the road again, bringing Shakespeare to the masses. This time it’s Hamlet, directed by Alan Stanford, and you can catch the eponymous Prince of Denmark doing his thing in an extended run at the Helix from Feb 23. While Stanford wouldn’t be my favourite director by a long shot, he has put together a pretty impressive cast, including Garrett Keogh, Barbara Brennan, Stephen Brennan, Maeve Fitzgerald and John Olohan, with Marty Rea in the title role.

Pavilion shows

Southsiders who missed the recent sellout CoisCeim double-bill at Project are in luck – it’s playing for one night only at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire on Sat 6 Feb. As You Are, directed by long-time CoisCéim dancer Muirne Bloomer, portrays a quirky world where individuals are tested to the limit as they struggle for control over themselves and each other. In Faun, CC artistic director David Bolger takes Nijinsky's iconic ballet L’après midi d’un Faune. – which caused a riot when it was first performed – and, mixing Debussy’s famous score with Queen, explores how dance still reconnects us with our feelings and imagination. www.coisceim.com

The appropriately named UK theatre company Love & Madness are at the Pavilion from Tue 9-Sat 13 with 2 new productions steeped in teenage angst and star-crossed love, Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (directed by former Cheek by Jowl-er Owen Horsley) and Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, a piece of gritty northern English realism from 1958. www.loveandmadness.org And if you fancy keeping all that crazy romance going, the Cafe Orchestra play a Valentine’s Night Special at the Pav on Sun 14 Feb. www.paviliontheatre.ie

Axis of Ballymun

A couple of interesting free gigs out at Axis in Ballymun. On Thur 4 Feb the Oska Bright Film Festival – the first such festival worldwide to be run by and for people with learning disabilities – sets up shop with screenings between 1 & 4pm of a range of short films including animations, documentaries, a soap-opera and a western, all made by film-makers with learning disabilities. On Tue 9 the American Embassy teams up with Axis to present African American dance theatre company Soul Steps. Telling stories of culture and community, the 5-strong company use their entire bodies as percussive instruments, as they trace the history of ‘stepping’ from South African gold mines and US slave plantations to the present day. Admission for both events is free, booking advisable @ www.axis-ballymun.ie

I'm a Celebrity...

There’s no shortage of glitz & glamour, not to mention fab musicianship, at the NCH’s ongoing Celebrity Concert Series. Virtuoso pianist and global superstar Lang Lang takes to the stage tomorrow evening (Tue 2 Feb) playing works by Beethoven, Albeniz and Prokofiev. A hero in his native China and listed as one of Time Magazine's ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’, Lang has even had a Steinway named after him – and he’s only 27. Tue 9 sees the return of NCH favourite, former child prodigy and violinist extraordinaire Sarah Chang, who’s partnered by Andrew von Oeyen in sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms and Cesar Franck and a new piece written specially for her by Christopher Theofanidis. Then in March (Thur 11) it’s the turn of another glam lady, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen (apparently iTunes’ most downloaded classical musician) playing an interesting mix of Brahms, Bartok, Janacek and Beethoven. www.nch.ie

Sundays @ Noon

More free music, this time at the Hugh Lane Gallery where the long-running Sundays @ Noon series continues to pull in the crowds - get there early if you want a decent seat. Berlin-based Irish tenor Paul McNamara does the honours on Sun 31 Jan, in the esteemed company of Australian pianist Philip Mayers. It's a double birthday celebration, with songs by Schumann and Wolf marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of the former and the 150th anniversary of the birth of the latter. Concerts in Feb include the rescheduled opening concert (from snow-bound Jan) of Fionnuala Moynihan's complete Mozart Piano Sonata series on Sun 7; cellist William Butt playing Kodaly's Sonata Opus 8 for violoncello solo on Sun 14; Mozart Sonatas for Violin and Piano performed by Mathieu van Bellen and Tadashi Imai on Sun 21; and the Clarion Trio (clarinet, viola and piano) playing trios by Mozart, Schumann and Rebecca Clarke on Sun 28. www.hughlane.ie

New Horizons

RTE's free Horizons series, focussing on contemporary Irish composers, is currently running at the NCH Tues lunchtimes. Featuring the RTE NSO, there are 2 concerts left in the series. On Feb 2 the featured composer is Elaine Agnew, with 3 of her works on the programme including Make a Wish, an RTE lyric fm commission, and you can also hear pieces by Elena Kats-Chernin and Stephen Gardner. Pianist Finghin Collins is the soloist and David Brophy conducts. Brian Irvine takes over as both composer and conductor on Feb 9, with a performance of his Montana Strange featuring Paul Dunmall on saxophone; a late addition to the programme is Bill Campbell's Weather Report. Irvine gives a pre-concert talk @12.30pm. www.rte.ie/performinggroups

Two Thousand & Ten

Greetings culture vultures, a (very) belated Happy New Year! A combination of holidays, maladies and a prolonged bout of broadband ‘outage’ all conspired to temporarily banish me from the ether. Outage? Outrage more like. What was I thinking switching to Vodafone. They leave you on hold for hours, force you to listen to crap music – if I ever come across that guy who sings More Than Words I’m gonna thump him – and then, 2 weeks later, they wake you up at 9 O’CLOCK ON A SUNDAY MORNING to try and fix the damn thing. And it still didn’t work… AAAAARRRGGH… First chance I have I’m switching right back.

Meanwhile it’s nearly February two thousand and ten. None of this twenty ten business in my neck of the woods. If the French can say ‘mille neuf cent quatre vingt dix neuf’ for 1999, then we should be able to manage something that doesn’t sound like poor vision. But the good news is, despite the R word, there’s actually oodles of stuff going on. Temple Bar Tradfest kicks off tomorrow (27 Jan til Sun 31) with concerts at Project and the Button Factory, including the likes of Matt Molloy, Finbar Furey and new kids on the block Liadan; pub sessions featuring some pretty high profile performers, among them Eleanor Shanley, Kila, Sean Og Potts, Kevin Glackin and loads more; and a string of workshops, screenings, parades, ceilis, in fact all the ingredients for a good oul hooley. www.templebartrad.com