Fintan O'Toole reviews The Cambria at Liberty Hall in Dublin and Peter Crawley reviews Nas at the Point also in Dublin

The Cambria
Liberty Hall

Donal O'Kelly's new play, The Cambria, is one of those works that, when you see it, seems inevitable. O'Kelly was perhaps the first Irish writer to be animated by the plight of refugees arriving here, with plays like Asylum! Asylum! and Farawayan. He has, meanwhile, had probably his greatest international success with the superb one-man drama Catalpa in which he re-enacted an epic 19th century voyage. The Cambria brings these two streams of his work together, re-creating the voyage from New York to Cobh in 1845 of the great African-American leader Frederick Douglass. Douglass, who had escaped from slavery in Baltimore, had then just published his famous Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, breaking one of the great silences of history.

Then, as he told a meeting in Belfast in December 1845, "He was apprehensive that some plan would be formed for his re-enslavement, and to get rid of the kidnapper and his galling fetters he ventured across the wave to tread the sacred soil of the Emerald Isle."

He was welcomed in Ireland by the great Daniel O'Connell and found asylum here. As he told his audience in Belfast, he stood on Irish soil "at least for a time, an acknowledged man, possessed of human rights."

Ireland's support for Douglass is a proud moment in our history, and re-visiting it might simply be an exercise in self-congratulation. But, of course, O'Kelly has something more challenging in mind. The feel-good factor is deployed strategically, as an agent of shame. The narrative of The Cambria is framed, with impeccable timing, by a simple scenario in which a teacher in Ireland now, laments the deportation back to Nigeria of one of her star pupils. The Cambria is thus a classically Brechtian parable in which a historical story is used to make a point about current politics. As such, it avoids the crude sentimentality of agitprop and creates an entertaining, thought-provoking and beautifully crafted dialogue between past and present.

Though its form shares a great deal with Catalpa, The Cambria charts a different course. Its political narrative is more straightforward, with a consequent toning down of the surreal imagery and linguistic fantasies that made Catalpa so thrilling.

O'Kelly's Herculean solo performance in that piece is also scaled down here with the addition of a second performer, the almost equally protean Sorcha Fox. The influence of director Raymond Keane, best known for his work with Barabbas, is also apparent in a subtle but perceptible shift away from verbal density and towards physical and gestural expressiveness. But these shifts from manic energy to a greater spareness suit the mood of The Cambria very well. For in spite of all the rapid-fire succession of personae, from little girl to doughty sea-dog and from curdled Southern slave-holder to bumptious Irish steward, the centre of the piece is, and must be, the calm, adamantine dignity of Douglass himself, whose moral courage requires no histrionics.

There is, in any case, a natural drama to the story of the voyage. Douglass's presence on board the ship was discovered by some slave-holding passengers who threatened to throw him overboard. (O'Kelly does not use Douglass's own report of the cool response of a gigantic Irishman on board who came to the refugee's defence and quietly hinted to one of those issuing the threats that "two might possibly play at that game".) These slave-holders are here personified in the figure of Dodd, nicely caricatured as a creature whose mask of gentility barely hides the face of barbarism beneath. O'Kelly also gives the ship's captain, who in Douglass's account seems to have treated him respectfully from the start, a crisis of conscience followed by a conversion to righteousness. And the figure of Dodd's little daughter Matilda, worried about the dancer trapped in her music-box, is brilliantly deployed to give both a metaphorical richness and a humane subtlety to the text.

The rapid pace and the lovely skill with which all the batons are passed and juggled by Fox and O'Kelly makes The Cambria as engaging as it is instructive. At a time when the public mood is ripening into a more mature and compassionate attitude to asylum and immigration, this is a well-aimed appeal to our better selves.

The Cambria is at Liberty Hall until April 2nd, at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway from April 4th and then embarks on a national tour.

Fintan O'Toole

Nas
The Point, Dublin

When three gunshots brought an abrupt halt to Nas's concert in London last week, hip-hop fans initially feared the worst. Coming shortly after another rap-related shooting in New York, moral guardians wondered once again if the gun-toting braggadocio of rap's superstars had come home to roost. And, once again, sales in hip-hop surged.

The dispiriting thing about Nas's Irish debut had little to do with gunfire or commercialism, however, and far more to do with a disturbingly undersold venue. Exactly how notorious do you have to be to sell out a gig these days? Perhaps the East-Coast MC has discovered that it's possible to keep things a little too real, his defection from the smooth-edges of MTV hip-hop losing him the support of those who take their rap with tricked-out rides.

But though the venue is barely half-full, the audience are clearly rap connoisseurs and Nasir Jones treats them to a strident performance where the only ballistics are in the burst and crackle of his lyrics.

With just a DJ, an occasionally appearing hype man and two super-sized security guards, the show is so austere it borders on thriftiness while Nas prowls the stage blazing through complex rhymes as comfortably as an alphabet recital. A Message to the Feds, Disciple and Suicide Bounce course with raw energy, barely contained by squat, heavy beats.

"Every word is a sawed-off blast," scowls Nas from beneath his baseball cap on Got Ur Self a Gun while the nervous few hug their Kevlar vests close. From behind the swagger, however, emerges the disarming fatalism of Life's a Bitch, One Love and Just a Moment, songs laced with sorrow and sincerity, lying down where all ladders begin.

But it's the brilliantly defiant Hate Me Know or the self-reliant credo of One Mic that best illustrate Nas's determination to hold fast while beats explode around him like whizzing bullets.

Peter Crawley