The Pirate Queen

Recently my day job has given me the opportunity to see some free theatre. I am never one to turn down free tickets to anything so off I went with my friend Jake to see, The Pirate Queen last night. Now, I was excited about seeing it, even when I heard the first murmurs of it coming to Broadway I was thrilled to have a female heavy show that featured corsets and swords. Plus, Stephanie Block has a voice from the angels and if she can be Liza in Boy from Oz then surely she can swagger around the sea as a pirate. Wide eyed and optimistic the show opens with what visually could be considered a fart. A chorus boy with a pan flute wandering the decks of a ship only to be followed by Grace (the pirate queen) and Tiernan her childhood friend turned lover inaudibly scamper around the stage. When suddenly, nothing happens, really they think they hear something and it’s nothing….this is the show in a nut shell.

Jake and I sat there in wonder at what actually made it into the show. Sing song exposition that didn’t expound on anything or of little importance or was so garbled I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The audience is waiting for the first fight sequence and when it finally gets on board, we watch the chorus boys run around the stage in no particular order waving their swords. I know, I know it sounds like a night out at Splash, but little swashbuckling buckled under the giant mast of The Pirate Queen which (also is the name of the ship) the O’Malley Clan roams in the sea aboard. Needless to say Grace wants to be a pirate and her father won’t let her so she sneaks aboard the ship, performs an act of heroism and gets her father to let her stay. Tiernan and her make a love pact only to be torn apart when the O’Malley’s decided to join forces with the O'Flaherty’s to fight the English which means Grace has to forgo her love for Tiernan and marry the villain son of Mr. O'Flaherty. Ho hum seen it before, don’t care because no one in the cast seems to either.

Nothing happens for about 30minutes when Grace’s father is wounded in a battle we don’t get to see, and she walks back across Ireland to see him before he dies. This makes no sense because why doesn’t she just sail there??? Why is The Pirate Queen walking anywhere and why does it take so long??? Watching a cast walk across stage for the length of a song is boring and then it snows, does it snow in Ireland??? I’m confused. Well, Daddy dies Grace leaves her philandering husband, becomes chieftain, & gets back with Tiernan. Daddy’s funeral ends the first act with the traditional burial of setting the boat adrift and the body on fire. Only when the “body” and boat get shoved down stage with oars it looks like a Pork Roast that needs basting. I laughed out loud at a moment that should have made me sad….NOT even close.

During intermission Jake and I tore the show apart and put it back together as if we had been the ones welding millions of dollars around a story no one cares about. Astoundingly the people around us could not stop gushing about how much they loved it…I checked to make sure they didn’t have down syndrome or some other affliction but no, they just seemed to be from Jersey.

The lights go down and Grace and her fat Irish friend come up out of the floor (a device that I have left out until now, but trust me it’s no big whoop, everything in the show either comes out of the hole or goes into the hole, kind of like Paris in jail) Grace is giving birth to a baby and or her tubby friend is giving her a PAP smear we can’t tell because they go back down into the hole so fast. But sure enough she’s having a baby and it’s a boy…we know this because the crew is now peering down into the hole (creepy) and at Sound Q 37 – babying crying…one of the sailors yells, “it’s a boy.” Grace sings a beautiful lullaby to her new baby and just when the audience is serene BANG, BANG, BANG cannons are going off and people in the audience are screaming!!! My eyes are burning because I was actually looking in the wrong place at the wrong time when the explosions (and I mean explosions) go off. I haven’t heard or smelled gun powder like that since I went to a Gettysburg reenactment as a child. But at least my heart rate elevated and I possibly lost a little weight.

Now the baby isn’t Tiernan’s its evil ex-husbands who plots to have Grace turned over to the English so he can get his son. However, after the ambush Grace goes to jail, Tiernan kills the ex-husband at which the audience yells HUZZAH!! Really they did audible cheers. Tiernan raising the baby for 7 years at which time he goes to the Queen and begs her to take him in place of Grace so she can be with her son. My question is it took him 7years??? I think he rather just sit in jail than deal with a toddler. Grace gets out, goes home see her son and then leaves him immediately to go back to England to tell the Queen that her people are being mistreated and starving. The cast is now dressed in old Les Miz costumes and walking around in groups…hmmmm all they need is a turn table, but we’ll just come up out of this handy hole we have instead.

The 2 female leaders sing the only decent song in the show, then go behind a back lit map, make a bargain for peace, and tie up all lose ends into our happy ending. Seems like we could apply this to Iraq don’t it boys?? However, on a historic note isn’t Ireland still under British rule?? Impoverish and bitter?? Kicking up a car bomb every now and then…so much for everlasting peace. We end the show with a Riverdance and sail merrily home with lover and son into our curtain call.

Frankly I think the show would have been better if Grace and the Queen had made out. But that’s just me I guess not every storyline can be like Xena: The Warrior Princess. Christ, have they made that into a musical yet???