Donal O'Kelly's Catalpa

An add appearing in Chicago's Irish American News February edition ( page 10) announcing the February 22nd opening of Donal O'Kelly's One-Man Play Catalpa, presented by the Irish repertory of Chicago noted that "His script is the true tale of The catalpa, an American whaling ship hijacked at sea and forced to sail to Australia is rescue a group of Irish political prisoners."

That note is misleading, neither the good ship Catalpa nor playwright/actor/director/film star O'Kelly is forced into the rescue or presenting that skewed bit of history. Donal O'Kelly and composer Trevor Knight present the mission of the Catalpa with attention to historical detail.

John Devoy, New York's exiled Irish Republican Brotherhood leader paid for the services of the Bedford Mass. Whaling ship, its Captain, Crew, and voyage, in order to bring about the escape of the Freemantle Six - Irishmen in the British Army found to have taken the oath of the IRB, sentenced to Life in Penal Servitude in Her Majesty's Western Australia Colony.

I attended the opening night performance in The Getz Theatre of Chicago's Columbia College. From the opening chords of Trevor Knight's musical adaptation to the final sounds of O'Kelly's child persona the packed house was made the willing participant of the sea saga about infidelity, patriotism, courage, skill, desperation, and hope.

The premise of Donal O'Kelly, a familiar face in the Celtic Tiger's cinema roll call, is of a man coming out of a failed movie pitch to Hollywood Producers. This fictional pitcher tries one more time and strikes one across the letters of O'Kelley's audience. Applying sound and sense from a palette thick with experience, O'Kelly and Knight treat their audience with the respect and the audio-caresses the Hollywood Players missed out on.

Verbally visualizing every shot, sound and mood O'Kelly's would-be movie maker takes the audience on a sound-voyage and verbal cruise through the adventures and psychological peculiarities of every character in 'the movie' to be.

Yankee Ship owners, West Indian Harpoonmen, Irish Icons, French chambermaids, A Sea Bird, Australian spies, Fenian Prisoners, an andry Wife and the angrier ghost of the Captain's mother-in-law pour from the soul and talents of Donal O'Kelly. One of the great lines of dialogue comes from the Yankee Ship owner who agrees to the Catalpa's place in the Fenian plot - for a handsome price of course states as his reason, ' We may at some time run out of whales to hunt, but we will never run out of Irish Americans!"

I had the pleasure to speak with the author/ performer after the thrilling two hours vanished like the Australian sea storms - Howling, Blasting, and Surging - now calm - assured - and trusting.

We met in the dark and chilly backstage of the Getz Theatre.

MY TALK WITH DONAL O'KELLY - 2/22/06 at Columbia College's Getz theatre

Pat Hickey for Wild Geese Today - PH

Donal O'Kelly - DO'K

PH - I am with the author and performer of Catalpa, Mr. Donal O'Kelly. We are at the Columbia College Theatre ( Getz Theatre) and you put on a brilliant performance. It's a remarkable piece as its a presentation to some movie producers 'gone south.' Would you talk about that a little bit?

Do'k -Well the whole idea is of a man writing a screenplay who can never really pitch the idea to producers - he always makes a mess of it. So, my idea of Catalpa is to present the idea to the audience as this guy sees it in his mind. We can theatrically and with live music recreate what the man wants to get across that a film might not allow and the audience is invited in to experience what this man wants to get across.

PH - The language of this play is remarkable - its sights and sounds and cadences. It's remarkably rhythmic.

DO'K - It's sort of our ( performer and audience) little short-hand -so that -unwittingly -the audience participates they get the images very vividly in their minds. Its economic use of language - At least in theory ( laughs)

PH - Well it works. This magnificent story presented in such an inviting manner. You had a packed house enthralled.

D"OK - We try not to draw a certain amount of attention the mechanics of the language so much as visualize through the sounds - rather than say 'Oh, isn't that such wonderful writing - as a distraction to them - try to be too clever. So what the audience gets is the features in their heads.

PH- Trevor's work picked up on your cadences and Language - particularly in the whales care of its child and how it merged with George Anthony's thoughts of home.

D'OK - Well Yeah, George has a bit of Mother Fixation or should I say the Ghost of a mother-in-Law Fixation. Throughout the play George ( Capt. of the Catalpa) is haunted by the ghost of his mother-in-law for breaking his vow never to go to sea again - its was a death-bed promise.

PH - You kept the historical background intact without drumming away at it too much. Here is Chicago the IRB was a great influence.

D'OK - Quite right for the sake of theatrics we did not include John Devoy's rival Goff of Chicago. As theatre piece we had to leave Chicago's part out of it.

PH - Well you must be exhausted and I'll get out of your hair. Let me thank you for bringing this play to Chicago.

DO'K - On the contrary it was through the support of Irish report Theatre and their sponsoring agencies - I will say this that they were an intelligent and responsive audience. They got the punchlines to the jokes set early on in the play. It was a great pleasure to bring them in.

Along with Knight and O'Kelly, Ms Sorcha Fox did a great job of balancing the lighting to meet the many moods created by the sound and sense of O'Kelly's presentation of Catalpa.