Fringe Racecard 2007 (part 1)

This year's Dublin International Fringe Festival offers 118 shows in a mere sixteen days and nights...so something's gotta give. Whether your tastes run to scantily clad female swordswallowers, or scantily clad male contortionists, or even elsewhere altogether, the Curtain has the essential guide to the Fringe, with the Top Five must see shows from the Fringe's first week.

(Full program at www.fringefest.com)

The Babelfish Tartuffe (SS Michael and John)
With a Fringe program, optimism and unbridled positivity is probably the best approach. I mean, who knows what The Babelfish Tartuffe will be like, but it' s already my favourite show. The shtick here is that Jamie Carswell and the Mangiare Theatre company have fed the French text of Moliere's classic comedy, Tartuffe, into the legendarily faulty internet translation site, Babelfish, and had the software output their script in English. Now, they are going to perform the resulting surreal computer re-writing of the seventeenth century tale of naivety, hypocrisy and an untrustworthy guru.


Ketzal / Incarnat (Samuel Beckett Theatre)
The award for most-hyped, er, that is, anticipated Fringe visitors this year… is shared between two companies. Russian outfit, Derevo's Ketzal, which mixes circus, performance art, mime, music and dance to create an abstract, extreme journey through human evolution, comes with a portfolio of boiling hot international reviews. While Fringe Festival director, Wolfgang Hoffman dubs Brazilian dance theatre company Lia Rodrigues' Incarnat "the most disturbingly moving reflection on human pain and suffering that I have ever seen". Beat that!


The Rep Experiment (Smock Alley)
Now is this a good idea, or the beginnings of a break-away festival. Working with a single cast, three directors will produce three different plays, and performed them in repertory for fifteen days. First off, Darragh McKeon directs a new version of Platonov by Chekhov, then David Horan has a tilt at Stephen Berkov's take on Kafka's Metamorphosis, while Tom Creed's production of German playwright, David Gieselmann's Mr. Kolpert closes out the rep season. The cycle kicks off September 8, but check carefully the dates of the show you want to see. That, or just take you chances.


Gerry and the Peace Process (Player Theatre)
The team that brought last year's funny, touching and weird, An Evening With Prionsias O'Ferfaille, are aiming even higher this year with nothing short of a musical comedy about the peace process with Big Ian, Gerry and Martin as protagonists. I, Keano meets Primetime, anyone?


All Over Town (Project Cube)
From the writer and star of the last year's runaway hit, Danny and Chantelle (Still Here) comes another dive into mayhem, this time directed by Calipo Theatre company's Darren Thornton. This time Phillip McMahon centres the action of his mad-for-it hero away from the Dublin clubs that our his natural habitat, and onto the backpacker trail in South East Asia, for a little 'gap year' action.