Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts Musa take on the tremendous task of condensing such material as can fill an intergenerational epic novel into the space of a 90-minute piece of theatre. They do so, in The Offering, with the time-warping help of music: the “seafaring oratorio” combines Omar Musa’s ambitious range of rap, spoken-word poetry, and song with Mariel Roberts Musa’s accompaniment on cello and—briefly, but gloriously—two hanging gongs.

Mariel’s classical training hums like an undertone to her virtuosic, expressionistic performance. She plucks and bows vigorously, operates her own analog recording and mixing, using every piece of the cello’s anatomy like a seasoned chef would poultry. Her solo sections ranged from a slow, sombre cadenza to a macabre dance piece to an almost unbearably tense frenzy of deep strings, injecting life and movement to the eerie, spare illustrations projected behind her. Her collaborations with Omar’s vocal music were also inventive; this has to be the first time I’ve heard a cello accompaniment to angry rap.

One of the most moving pieces of the set is a historical “lecture” on the island of Borneo. Omar spins a rhapsody out of a close-reading of Borneo’s flags, under the Union Jack, the Rising Sun, then various versions transitioning towards cultural independence. Generations of Omar’s family come and go under the shifting symbols, and he narrates an arresting history of ordinary people who had their lives shaped by the decisions of foreign powers—ancestors who were exploited by the brutal British empire; grandparents who had the imperial Japanese anthem carved into their muscle memory; a nation plundered for its rich climate and rainforests, looted for the spice-melange-like commodity of palm oil.

This compelling personal history is, however, somewhat undermined by the jarring, Twitter-style motif, “fact-check me but facts are not truth, facts are not truth, facts are not truth…” Internet profundity is difficult to reach, buried under mantles of irony, and this motif was a little too blunt at its cusp, at least to touch a generation of social media users already drowned in scepticism.

Omar, who is a poet and visual artist, wrestles with the question that confronts anyone who has scribbled blank verse on the backside of a receipt: “can poetry in any way forestall the rising tide?” That is, what is the role of the poet in fighting against societies—an entire world—that is failing? The poet plays all roles. Witness first of all to the passing of oral and ecological histories, judge and jury in its activistic stance. Victim, also, to a capitalistic orientation that forces art, especially by people of colour, into commodity or poverty (Omar raps, “the colonisers fuck me with mechanical dicks”).

But finally, and crucially, the poet is a perpetrator. Omar recounts a childhood scene with his grandmother, who produces for him a treasured box of turtle’s eggs, a delicacy she coveted in her youth. Omar recounts greedily cracking them open, one after the other, and guzzling the yolk inside. “I wouldn’t do that anymore,” he says sagely, launching into an elegiac verse to the beauty and divinity of sea turtles who are terrorised by plastic and by human recklessness.

The poet is a person who participates in the ebbs and flows, the swings and dips of personhood. It is in playing every role or, indeed, in understanding every role that they have played, that the poet can make their infinite offering.