IT'S slightly surreal that a multi-million selling 'American Idol' winner is playing the intimate confines of the Olympia rather than the cavernous O2.

"I'm a sucker for theatre shows," she announces to a cacophony of enthusiastic screams. "I like to see everyone's faces."

The lighting towers must have been designed for far bigger venues and are, quite literally, blinding. Normally, one's chief concern at a typical Olympia concert would be volume, but seconds into the show and one is craving sunglasses.

Kicking off with the title track from her most recent album, 'All I Ever Wanted', Clarkson and her band run straight into 'Miss Independent' without pausing for breath. Unlike most of her peers, she has more than enough material from four albums to play a full show.

However, she still throws in an occasional cover. 'Use Somebody' by Kings of Leon is stripped back and re-invented as a pleading pop-rock number, showcasing her powerful voice and why she has been called the "Lance Armstrong of vocal chords".

Whatever about Kings of Leon, it's a surprise to hear her tackle Patsy Cline's 'Walking After Midnight'. Admittedly, it's a fantastic song, although the histrionics don't do it any favours.

Clarkson's rock-based backing band and AC/DC introduction music prove just how much guitar music has infiltrated modern pop. Like teen-pop giant Miley Cyrus, Clarkson treads a hybrid of the two and the sugar-sweet girl/boy pop of yore is deemed dated and dull.

While this makes for better entertainment, sometimes you'd yearn for one or the other. The intriguingly titled 'My Life Would Suck Without You' and 'Some Girls Have All the Luck' possess an almost punky directness.

The 'Pop Idol' and 'X Factor'-style of TV show has usurped 'Big Brother' as the all-conquering global television franchise. There is no better indication of its pervasiveness than one of the format's biggest proteges taking over the Olympia and looking very much at home.

HAVING performed in front of an international audience of more than five billion people at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Chinese pianist Lang Lang enjoys almost pop-idol levels of adulation and his performance at the National Concert Hall justifies this unusual acclaim.

His programme separates sonatas by Beethoven and Prokofiev with part of Albeniz' evocative 'Iberia'.

Lang Lang's energetic playing in the opening of Beethoven's early C major Op 2/3 Sonata reflects the composer's revolutionary spirit. Dedicated to Haydn -- an invigorating innovator -- the Sonata's malevolent lurches rupture periods of benevolent reflection.

The Adagio's flowing theme brings Lang Lang's poetic sensitivity to the fore, but, like the opening Allegro, it has its contrasted dramatic upsurges.

Lang Lang captures the hopping staccatos of the Scherzo perfectly, before launching into the cheeky agitation of the Finale.

His approach to Beethoven's F minor Op 57 'Appassionata' Sonata befits its expansive breadth. There is dynamic impulsiveness before the tenderness of the Andante's calm central variations. The bustling Finale explodes with tremendous verse.

Albeniz' Book I of 'Iberia' enters a different, at times almost Debussy-esque, sound world.

Exceptionally expressive in 'Evocacion', Lang Lang's view of 'El Puerto', is a fascinating portrayal of colourful fiesta. Castanets click gently before passionate flamenco swirls. Tolling bells in 'El Corpus Christi en Sevilla' create their own exotic processional atmosphere.

In Prokofiev's wartime 'Seventh Sonata', Lang Lang recall's poet Wilfred Owen's 'monstrous anger of the guns' and 'stuttering rifles rapid rattle' between its ghostly reveries.

Maybe he could dally a little longer in the romantic Andante, but the Sonata's bravura Finale reaches an impressive peak through Lang Lang's astonishing virtuosity.

IT may be dreary February outside, but behind the curtains in the cafe theatre at Bewley's, it is a hot and humid afternoon in Russia. Our hostess for the hour is Olga: elegant, witty, beautiful, and heavily pregnant, she talks us through the intricacies and intimacies of the party she has thrown for her husband.

This being Chekhov, it will be no surprise that the intricacies are oppressive and the intimacies strained. Exhausted by the effort of both socialising and carrying her baby, and exasperated by the superficiality of conversations, she seeks refuge in the garden, where she overhears her husband flirting with a younger guest.

She begins to despair, both of their relationship and, with that awareness of falsity that seeps through Chekhov, of the very society around her.

"Why do these people hustle and pretend to enjoy themselves?" she laments. "Why do I smile and lie?"

In another actor's hands, this could become wearisome. Caitriona Ni Mhurchu, though, illuminates the role with an irrepressible joie-de-vivre that turns much of the melancholy into wry humour.

Talking directly to the audience, as if we were her confidants, she implicates us in her social milieu and turns Chekhov's story into a gentle satire at our expense.

The adaptation is by Ni Mhurchu with Sophie Motley, and it is a sensitive and smart rendering of a short story written in the third person into a monologue. Motley's direction is accomplished, allowing Ni Mhurchu to mine the emotional range of the script as well as the physical potential of the space.

It is, though, a touch too reverential. The story, though beautifully told, is rather slight, and Ni Mhurchu's natural effervescence would lend itself to a pacier delivery.

All told, this is satisfying lunchtime fare from Bewley's.

- Pat O'Kelly

Irish Independent