According to Lincoln Center's new LCT3 project at its slogan, it takes "New Audiences for New Artists." It also takes new critics, hence the establishment of Theater Talk's New Theater Corps in 2005, a way for up-and-coming theater writers and eager new theatergoers to get exposure to the ever-growing theater scene in New York City. Writers for the New Theater Corps are given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the off-off and off-Broadway theater scene, learning and giving back high-quality reviews at the same time. Driven by a passion and love of the arts, the New Theater Corps aims to identify, support, and grow the arts community, one show and one person at a time.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Catalpa

Donal O’Kelly’s panache in this whirlwind one-man show is both indulgent and infectious. But while he clearly relishes the playful challenge of morphing from captain to first mate to wife to sea bird—all of which he accomplishes, amazingly, with no more than a microphone, a trunk, and a gauzy white drape—there is only so much one man can do in portraying an epic historical tale.


Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

Donal O’Kelly must have spun some outstanding yarns as a child, because his storytelling skills are on full display in his solo show Catalpa. However, while he turns the true tale of a late 19th-century seafaring rescue mission into a rollicking aural experience, the story itself is lost in the larger-than-life details. O’Kelly’s panache is both indulgent and infectious, so while he clearly relishes the playful challenge of morphing from captain to first mate to wife to sea bird—all of which he accomplishes, amazingly, with no more than a microphone, a trunk, and a gauzy white drape—it compromises the fascinating history he seeks to portray.

The Catalpa was a whaling ship that, in 1875, set sail from New Bedford, Massachusetts to Western Australia with the undercover plan to rescue a handful of Irish prisoners who had fought British rule in the Fenian Rebellion. Lacking the resources to create a fully cast blockbuster, O’Kelly has instead couched it as an idea for a movie, narrated by a man alone in his bedroom. Because the action isn’t physical, Catalpa comes across as a plot-driven spoken-word performance, complete with live original music by Trevor Knight (which nicely complements O’Kelly’s shifting moods). With the aid of an arresting lighting design by Ronan Fingleton, O’Kelly launches himself and the audience into Captain George Anthony’s voyage around the world. He is at his best when he touches upon the connection between the sea and the women in Captain Anthony’s life (this theme deserves to be a piece unto itself). The language explodes with rich symbolism and onomatopoeia; with your eyes closed you can almost smell the salty waves and feel the wind rippling in the sails.

The magic only works some of the time, though. Often, O’Kelly is like a kid at play in his private world, so absorbed in his imaginary circumstances that he seems to forget he is performing for other people. In these moments, his characters are less than sympathetic, and the vitality of the tale is dulled by what becomes a meta-retelling. 

The many voices of Catalpa whir by so fast that O’Kelly, for all his mesmerizing flourishes of sound and movement, is often swept away from the real drama: an epic adventure of man against nature and man against himself as he fights for justice and for his passion. Donal O’Kelly’s ambition finds moments of great triumph, providing gleeful entertainment and a marvelous display of poetics in voice and body, but Catalpa would be a story well served on a different sort of stage: that of the big screen.

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Catalpa (2 hours; 10 minute intermission)
Donaghy Theatre at the Irish Arts Center (553 West 51st Street)
Tickets: $60; $55 for member
Limited Engagement: November 12 - 30.
Tues-Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 3pm

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