Theatre by Mark Brown

IT is fitting that Andy Arnold should end his 17-year directorship at The Arches, the venue and theatre company he founded, with this beautifully balanced presentation of Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire (The Town Without Laughter). Although his tenure has been peppered with large-scale triumphs - such as Arthur Miller's The Crucible in 1994 and Brian Friel's Translations, which he staged recently at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre - the success of Arnold's Arches programmes has been down in part to brilliantly assured productions of small-scale (often Irish) modern classics.

Murphy - whose best known work, A Whistle In The Dark, was given a memorable production by Roxana Silbert at the Citizens in 2004 - is among Ireland's greatest living dramatists. Bailegangaire - in which Mommo, an elderly woman who appears to be in a deepening condition of dementia, lies in her Galway bed, retelling the same story over and over - can only further enhance his reputation.

Mommo's granddaughters Mary (a former nurse and her current carer) and Dolly (the desperately lost wife of a violent husband who works in England) interact around the articulate old woman, whose short-term memory gives way to remarkably sharp reminiscences of the distant past. The effect is, in the most powerful sense, tragicomic. The condition of the old woman, and the frustrations of her granddaughters, will be instantly recognisable to many people whose lives have been touched by dementia. However, the content and the linguistic virtuosity of Mommo's storytelling (Murphy's abundant and rich writing given exceptional expression by the wonderful Kay Gallie) give the play another dimension, more specific to Ireland in the mid-1980s, when the play was written.

The bleak nostalgia of Mommo's story contrasts with the tragic family history which has blighted the lives of her granddaughters (Muireann Kelly and Kathleen MacInnes, both on scintillating form). In some ways, in relation to Ireland - and the west of Ireland, in particular - the play's rueful comedy feels like a less sarcastic, more overtly humanistic cousin of Martin McDonagh's brilliant and scabrous Leenane Trilogy.

Murphy's writing has the emotional weight and the intellectual athleticism of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Arnold's production makes it resonate because it is wonderfully complete, from the excellent performances to Hazel Blue's amazingly detailed set - which, on its own, saddens the soul.

In the past, Glasgow's Suspect Culture was feted as one of the most exciting theatre companies in the UK. London-based Graeae Theatre has also received plaudits as Britain's most important disabled-led drama company. How the mighty have fallen. It is a huge disappointment that Static - the joint piece which the two companies are currently touring throughout the UK - should turn out to be such an astonishingly misconceived and ineffective production. The title of Dan Rebellato's play may refer (literally) to the electric noise on audio cassettes and (metaphorically) to the emotional limbo experienced by the bereaved, but it also has a third, unintended meaning. The drama - in which the loved ones of recently deceased rock music journalist, Chris, attempt to come to terms with their grief - is, in the worst possible sense, a static piece of theatre.

Early scenes inform us that music-obsessed Chris was deafened in a car accident some years before his death from a brain haemorrhage. His devastated wife, Sarah, discovers a compilation tape which her spouse had made for her; and it is clear from the tracks that he must have compiled it after he became deaf. To the evident frustration of Chris's best friend and fellow music journalist, Martin, Sarah becomes convinced that the dead man is trying to speak to her through the cassette.

The lack of movement in the piece comes not only from a grief-induced suspended animation, but also from the play's almost total failure in character development. This is particularly true of Chris's sister, Julia, a one-dimensional caricature whose sadness is submerged by bitterness.

If the characterisations are weak, the plot and dialogue do little to promote empathy. In one of an array of clichés, Sarah tells Martin that it feels as if Chris is in the room with her; co-directors Graham Eatough and Jenny Sealey have no compunction in ensuring that he is there, in ghostly form. It is a piece of sentimentality so saccharine that it would harden the softest heart.

Given the music that is its backdrop, the production is blessed with a brilliant soundtrack, from The Beatles to Nirvana. Yet neither that nor the play's interweaving of sign language with spoken dialogue is enough to make Static anything more than a truly turgid 90 minutes of theatre.