In this new two-hander, writer/performer Donal O'Kelly combines the storytelling style of his acclaimed solo show, Catalpa, with the subject matter that has preoccupied his theatre for over a decade - the challenges asylum seekers face in Ireland. The final element is a surprising historical fact: that the American slave and author Frederick Douglass, his fame and notoriety growing in the US, secretly boarded a Cunard liner in 1845 and was met with a hero's welcome in Ireland. Douglass' ideas and writings became important fuel for Daniel O'Connell's Irish emancipation movement.
This context is set up through a quick framing scene, in which a contemporary Irish teacher, waiting to protest a star Nigerian pupil's deportation to Lagos, starts to tell Douglass' story to a bystanding worker. The production then zaps back in time to tell the story of Douglass' transatlantic voyage. O'Kelly holds back the fact that O'Connell actually invited Douglass to Ireland, leaving the audience in the same position as the ship's passengers, wondering how an American black man in the mid-1800s could afford a first-class ticket.
This and other choices give the story a melodramatic edge, as the ship's population divides between pro-Douglass goodies and a closed-minded baddie (the rich slaveowner Dodd). The second act sags in an over-poetic interlude as Captain Judkins recalls his father's history captaining a slave ship.
But what makes the show wonderful to watch is how O'Kelly and the talented Sorcha Fox fluidly switch between a number of very distinct characterisations. The payoff of Douglass' triumphant arrival is quite brief, but this is surely part of O'Kelly's agenda - he is styling Douglass as a prototypical asylum seeker to offset the current Irish government's position on immigration. He is thus coming at a very topical point rather indirectly, but because his story is so well-chosen, he leaves his audience with real food for thought.
· Until April 2. Box office: 00 353 1 872 1122. Then touring.
