Two plays, two view of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, born in 1817 near Easton, Maryland, the son of a black slave mother, Harriet Bailey, and an unknown white father, became the outstanding African-American abolitionist of his day, as well as an admired author.
Now, he is at the core of two theatrical productions playing in rotation at the Irish Arts Center: Donal O’Kelly’s two-actor play, “The Cambria,” and Roger Guenveur Smith’s solo show, “Frederick Douglass Now.”
In 1845, shortly before his 30th birthday, having successfully escaped from his owner, Douglass sailed from Boston to Ireland aboard the Cambria, a paddlewheel steamer owned by Cunard. Technically, he was a runaway slave with a bounty on his head, traveling on false papers and using an assumed name. He possessed a first class stateroom ticket, probably given to him by the white abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, one of his most fervent supporters.
The story of Douglass’s sea voyage supplies the main material for O’Kelly’s compelling play, in which the actor/author and his co-star, Sorcha Fox, play a variety of characters, four in his case and five in hers.
When he sailed aboard the Cambria, Douglass had already written “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” published that same year. Douglass had adopted his surname from that of the hero of Sir Walter Scott’s novel, “The Lady of the Lake.” Aboard the Cambria, he called himself Mr. Johnson, and was presumed to be a minstrel en route to a performance date somewhere.
In O’Kelly’s version of the tale, well-directed by Raymond Keane, Johnson makes a shipboard friend of a literate child, Matilda, daughter of a racist father, Dodd, who occupies the adjacent cabin. Dodd, having discovered Douglass’s identity, attempts to have him captured and returned to slavery.
The versatile Fox plays Matilda, two other passengers, plus a crew member, while O’Kelly does Douglass, the villainous Dodd, and Irish hero Daniel O’Connell. In addition, both actors take a stab at portraying Captain Judkin, the master of the Cambria.
While Douglass occupies the center of O’Kelly’s play, his presence in Roger Guenveur Smith’s vivid hour-long monodrama, “Frederick Douglass Now,” is somewhat peripheral. Smith’s dazzling and complicated text, mainly delivered at breakneck pitch and employing great vocal variety, demands close attention and total concentration on the part of its audiences.
If Smith’s hearers do their part, “Frederick Douglass Now” can come across with total clarity. If they allow their minds to wander, even very briefly, the thread linking this rich, dense, often fragmentary material may be distractingly broken. While Smith’s brilliantly conceived work owes much to hip hop and rap, its debts could be said to reach back in time as far as Virginia Woolf and other early practitioners of “stream-of-consciousness” writing.
“Frederick Douglass Now” is a kind of forced march through the history of black life in the United States over the course of the last century, delivered with subtlety, grace and rare insight and intelligence.
The Irish Arts Center is to be commended for pairing these two plays, each of them more rewarding as part of a duo than either would have been on its own.