Donal O’Kelly staging one of the greatest Irish stories ever told

Catalpa tells the incredible true tale of the vessel that sailed to Australia in 1875 to break six Fenians out of jail, writes Richard Fitzpatrick.

DONAL O’Kelly’s one-man play, Catalpa made serious waves when it was first produced in 1995. It won a Fringe First Award at Edinburgh, and sailed around the world for performances. To mark its 20th anniversary, O’Kelly is touring it around Ireland, including a performance in Cork tomorrow.

The play is based on a famous jailbreak. In 1874, James Wilson, a prisoner at a British penal colony in Western Australia, smuggled a letter — “a voice from the tomb” — to John Devoy, the Fenian leader exiled in the United States.