Review: ‘Shipwreck’d’ explores tale of adventure, personal growth

James O’Connell was a man who made the best of things. When he was shipwrecked off the island of Pohnpei, he made such a great impression on the islanders that they eventually adopted him as one of their own — a process that resulted in his being tattooed on his hands, arms, legs and torso.

However, when the Irishman returned to the United States in 1835, he discovered that Americans considered his tattoos grotesque and an affront to decency. O’Connell turned to displaying his tattoos and telling stories about his Pacific adventures as a star of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum’s freak show and then with the Dan Rice Circus. He died in 1854.

Veteran actor/playwright Daniel A. Kelin II brings O’Connell to life in his new one-man show, “Shipwreck’d on the Body Beautiful, or the Tats Dancing Man,” at Kumu Kahua Theatre.

During his 90-minute, nonstop performance, Kelin portrays O’Connell near the end of his life when he was touring with the Rice Circus. The production is staged as if the audience is witnessing his circus act. Those entering the theater find O’Connell sitting quietly at the back of the show tent stage. When it’s showtime he goes into action.At first O’Connell challenges the audience for its prurient desire to see his tattooed body and warns that people in previous shows have fled in horror on seeing them. He adds that copies of his memoir, “The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Donnell: The Tattooed Man,” will be available for sale outside the tent after the show.

Kelin plays O’Connell as a superb yarn-spinner skilled in voicing other characters, including two of his shipmates, several of the islanders, the high-ranking Pohnpeian woman who becomes his wife, and the villainous American sea captain who lacks O’Connell’s understanding of the native culture and kills numerous islanders while enabling O’Connell’s departure from Pohnpei.

We come to see — through O’Connell’s eyes — that the Pohnpeians are more civilized in their own way than the outsiders who see them as “savages.”

Insightful as “Shipwreck’d” is, Kelin and director Harry Wong III squander an opportunity to further educate Kumu Kahua audiences on O’Connell and Pohnpei by not using some of the space in the generously sized playbill to address questions that go unanswered onstage. What is the significance of the clucking sound that is apparently part of the Pohnpeian language? Why was there a kapu on eating eels? What happened to the wife and children O’Connell deserted?

If O’Connell had gone to the Pacific with the intention of tricking islanders into tattooing him so he could return to America and make money from his newly acquired knowledge of their culture, Kelin’s epic tale could be described as one of “physical appropriation.” But O’Connell didn’t set out to appropriate anything, and his story is one of adventure, adaptation, personal growth and discovery — and the aftermath of his decision to leave Pohnpei, where he enjoyed elite status.

O’Connell may have been better off staying.