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Theatre Review: The Cambria

Starring Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox at the Irish Arts Center, New York, NY

CAHIR O'DOHERTY

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 2:12 PM

Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:23 PM

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Read more: Donal O’Kelly, Frederick Douglass, Cambria, Sorcha Fox, Ireland, United States, Entertainment, Performing Arts, Theater, Theatrical Plays

Donal O'Kelly and Sorcha Fox star in the Irish Arts Center "The Cambria"

Photo by Erin Baiano

With his new play "The Cambria" at the Irish Arts Center in New York having concluded its run on Sunday, playwright and actor Donal O’Kelly steps to the front line of contemporary Irish playwrights. In fact, in terms of the play’s theatrical skill and thematic ambition, he already has his contemporaries beat.

O’Kelly’s subtle and moving play about the African-American ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ voyage to Ireland in 1845, co-starring Sorcha Fox, could easily have been a deadly dull sermon about the need to protect universal human rights. But in O’Kelly’s hands it instead becomes an absorbing meditation on what makes us human, what connects us to each other and what tears us apart.

The production, directed by Raymond Keane, is nimble and evocative, conjuring a ship on the open seas and all the male and female passengers who populate it. Fox is especially good at these transformations between roles, playing male and female charachters so convincingly that you’ll be swept up by the storyline from start to finish.

The play’s plot is as interesting as its theatrical presentation. The year is 1845, and the 30-year-old famed abolitionist Douglass is sailing for Europe aboard a ship called the Cambria, fleeing the hostile forces in the United States determined to halt his call for the end of slavery in the southern states.

A former slave himself, Douglass knew the fate that awaited him in America and decided to take his abolitionist message to Europe to enlist its help.

Visiting Ireland for the first time, he was astonished to receive a hero’s welcome from vast crowds of sympathetic, long-suffering Irish Catholics familiar with his career and his recently published autobiography. The Irish liberator Daniel O’Connell himself arrives in Cork — then known as Queenstown — to welcome Douglass at the dock.

O’Kelly is aware of the potent overlaps between racial and colonial oppression, but he does not belabor his points. Instead he simply lets them emerge to often devastating theatrical effect.

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A sea change in the history of the Irish theatre came with the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre, later to become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th century. These included W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey. The Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for future dramatists of Irish plays. Indeed, it could almost be said that the Abbey created the basic elements of a national style for Irish plays. This period also saw a rise in the writing of plays in Irish, especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc, a theatre dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928, introduced Irish theatre audiences to many of the classics of the European stage. The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to prominence. Samuel Beckett is probably the most significant of these. Beckett had a long career as a novelist and poet before his first play, Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous. This play, along with his second, Endgame, is one of the great works of absurdist theatre. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969. The Lyric Theatre, founded in 1944 by Austin Clarke was based in the Abbey until 1951 and produced many of Clarke's own verse plays. From the mid 1950s, the Unitarian Church at St Stephen's Green, Dublin was home to Amharclann an Damer/The Damer Theatre. The Damer produced both professional and amateur Irish plays. The world premier of Brendan Behan's An Giall (The Hostage) took place here in 1958. Behan went on to be an extremely popular dramatist, particularly through his work with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London. But in general, the Abbey was the dominant influence in Irish theatre across the 20th century. Beckett's example has been almost entirely ignored in Irish theatre, although his plays are regularly performed on the Irish stage. Behan, in his use of song and direct address to the audience, was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Denis Johnston, and used modernist techniques including found texts and collage, but their works had little impact on later Irish plays. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Irish theatre companies emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and introduce different styles and approaches with regard to Irish plays. These included Focus Theatre, The Children's T Company, the Project Theatre Company, Red Kettle, Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies nurtured a number of writers, actors, and directors who went on to be successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood or in other literary fields. These include Joe O Byrne, Peter Sheridan, Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Garry Hynes, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Marina Carr, Jimmy Murphy, Billy Roche and Gabriel Byrne. In the 1990s and 2000s a new wave of Irish theatre companies arrived. These include: Bedrock, Blue Raincoat, B*spoke, The Corn Exchange, Corcadorca, Fishamble, Pan Pan, Playgroup, Raw, Rough Magic, and Tardy Lasso.

Theatre Review: The Cambria

Starring Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox at the Irish Arts Center, New York, NY

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