Reviews

Ali Bracken reviews  Roots Manuva at The Ambassador. Mark Ewart reviews Claus Havemann's Trptych exhibition at the Form Gallery in Cork. Mary Leland reviews Victor Frankenstein, Grand Parade, Cork. Peter Crawley reviews Jimmy Cliff at The Ambassador in Dublin.

Roots Manuva,  The Ambassador

Forget The Streets and Dizzee Rascal. Roots Manuva, the elder statesman of British hip-hop, remains the UK's most powerful rap artist.

Emcee Rodney Smith, aka Roots Manuva, along with his six-piece live band, delivered a dub-infected show in the Ambassador and created a vibe that had everyone smiling.

The Mobo Award winner and Mercury Prize nominee (he lost out to Ms Dynamite in 2002) proved he isn't afraid to challenge his fans with a charged and innovative live performance. The band - DJ, drums, base, guitar, keyboard and samplers - never wavered, and provided the appropriate hip-hop beats and dub licks.

On the night Smith's emceeing skills were on-point and the introspective lyricist did justice to his latest aptly-named album Awfully Deep. At moments, though, he seemed tired and except for the backing band and added presence of a soulful-singing emcee, may have faltered.

But his renditions of Witness (1 Hope) and Dreamy Days were suitably charged, and injected adrenaline into the crowd.

From South London with Afro-Caribbean roots, Smith has released four very distinctive albums. His style is a mishmash of many influences, but is dominated by dub-reggae and hip-hop. As a result, his live performance jarred from up-tempo songs to the more melancholy, but Smith pulled this off with ease.

Roots Manuva's notoriety stems from his willingness to experiment, and he has gained more respect in the US than any other British rapper.

New Zealanders Mikee D and King Kapisi warmed up, with the latter showing real promise and distinctive flair. Disappointing perhaps that no home-grown support was showcased, especially since the Irish pool to choose from is ever-widening. Ali Bracken

Claus Havemann,Triptych, Form Gallery, Cork

Claus Havemann found inspiration for his artwork after relocation from Denmark to Sherkin Island in west Cork. It was there he found the subtleties and contrasts of shifting light and its effect on colour a rejuvenation for the senses and a kick-start for his stalled artistic career.

His interest in colour, however, is not necessarily homage to a specific location as it appears the relationships and interaction between colour is, in a sense, an academic rather than a purely emotional reflex.

Stylistically the paintings are at home under the category of hard edge or colour field post-painterly abstraction, where flat unmodulated surfaces define the composition with little or no reference to image and form.

As the title of the exhibition tells us, each piece is a triptych - a format which is integral in that the actual dimensions and position of each canvas become extensions of the compositional arrangements themselves.

Havemann engineers a square or rectangle motif which halves exponentially as it spirals into a corner of the canvas. This has definite mathematical overtones as the changing surface area proportions; tonality and hues seem to be measured by the artist.

And so to the colour itself which ranges between pure primaries, discrete neutrals and black. Often these colours are built up gradually using tenuous veils that seep into the canvas itself. The pristine nature of the colour has an almost meditative quality that many viewers will find quite seductive.

Runs until Wednesday. Mark Ewart

Victor Frankenstein, Grand Parade, Cork

The "health and safety"-style warning proclaimed before Compagnie Jo Bithume's presentation of Victor Frankenstein at the Grand Parade in Cork seems to live up to the promise of unusual theatrical experiences offered by the Corcadorca Relocations project for Cork 2005.

Advised that the growing delay is due to the need to wait for the dark if the spectacular lighting and video effects are to have their full impact, the audience is warned the action takes place "around, behind, in front of and above you".

When the world premiere of the company's new production begins with its simulation of arctic blizzards and cracking, colliding ice-caps, the shrouded set is revealed as an old ship whose promontories become acting areas separated by both time and events, as well as by the length of the ship itself.

Although this is a deliberate and metaphorical distance, it is also a disruptive one. There is drama in the gliding passage of the mainmast, complete with mariner and doubling as a flimsy screen for the video which narrates the back-story in jerking images (and in English).

But the physical scale has been misjudged. Against the proportions of the set, the actors are minute and the monster himself, invested with crucial pathos by Andre Layus, is so ordinary in size as to make one wonder what the fuss is about. The excitements, therefore, are technical, enhanced by appropriate sound effects and the rhythms of the live band.

They are also physical, in the sensations of the cold night air, the lateness of the hour, the street's transformation into an open auditorium and the co-operative demand on the spectators. It is true that the company uses techniques and styles we may not have seen before, but these are not the purpose of the performance.

Unquestionably the company, directed by Pierre Dolivet, works with both skill and imagination covering many roles (not all of them dramatic).

Equally it is invigorating to see the degree to which the civic authorities have co-operated with this project: closing off half a main city-centre street, redirecting traffic and quenching street-lights as part of the collaborative cultural effort which brings such welcome events to the core of the city. Mary Leland

Jimmy Cliff, The Ambassador

The man who introduced reggae to the world wants to know how we're doing. But Jimmy Cliff, resplendent in a bright ensemble of vivid yellows and gold, expects only one answer. It's a positive response; expressing a state of well being, if not serenity; the sort of sensation brought on either by finding inner peace or inhaling a heroic dose of ganja.

This feeling has a name, and everyone in The Ambassador must shout it: "Irie!"

Cliff, whose popping moves and flying elbows resemble a break dancing string-puppet, works hard to maintain this joyful atmosphere, his good-time reggae pop supplying the most potent of intoxicants.

Hardly betraying his 57 years, Cliff skits through You Can Get It If You Really Want, Rub-A-Dub Partner and Cat Stevens's Wild World as his nine-piece band dish out stabs of brass, bouncing bass lines and guitars strummed brightly on the upbeat.

It's this rhythm which gives reggae its lilt, the totally tropical taste of a laidback fantasy, the soundtrack to 1,000 lotto ads.

But reggae has always been political at heart, and for all his crossover compromises Cliff understands that the world is not irie. "I want to sing something about the environment," he calls out, and it's hard to suppress a shudder.

Save Planet Earth, Vietnam and War in Jerusalem follow in dutiful protest, but it's the deceptive breeze of The Harder They Come that carries his points best.

The man who smuggled a line like, "I'd rather be a free man in my grave/ Than living as a puppet or a slave" into the cheery folds of pop now strips Rivers of Babylon down to a slow, focused and spiritual beat, while his vocal talents glow and shimmer.

Feeling irie, our hands in the air, we resonate contentedly with the music and the message. Peter Crawley