MEATLOAF (The Point Depot, Dublin)

HE CAME from Planet Girth. Bestriding the stage in a suitably colossus-like fashion, the man they call Meat leads his frenzied followers through a three-hour extravaganza of orchestral excess.

First things first: this is not, in any recognisable sense of the words, rock’n’roll. It is, in actual fact, a pop cabaret. Had Sonny Knowles been born in the Deep South, ate rather more than was good for him and teased his flowing locks in the rockist manner, he may well have turned out something like this.