Playwright: Justin Fletcher, Richard Ragsdale
At: Defiant Theatre at Chopin Theatre
Phone: (312) 409-0585; $15-$18
Runs through: Aug. 21
By Jonathan Abarbanel
The Defiant Theatre's send-up of swashbuckling at sea is a large, ambitious production that's too long, too loud, too confusing and not amusing. At the first intermission (there are two), I said to my companion 'This won't get any better, just longer.' The Pyrates did get a little better in Act II, largely through the exaggeration of Kelly Cooper as a bloodthirsty Spanish Viceroy, sporting a Redmoon Theatre-style masked costume. But Cooper alone wasn't enough to save this unwieldy vessel from capsizing and sinking with all hands.
It's a cliché story: 1680s, buccaneers, treasure, a beautiful virgin hostage, a dashing British captain. Adapted from a novel by George MacDonald Fraser, its only singularity is a coalition of pirate captains known as the Coastal Brethren, one of whom is a Black woman. Adapters Justin Fletcher and Richard Ragsdale seem to have left intact every major plot twist, sea battle and sword fight of the novel and thrown in another half-dozen sword fights for good measure. At nearly three hours The Pyrates is fully an act too long, padded by gratuitous stage combat and an endless series of crosses and double-crosses. It desperately needs a streamlined story and stronger character development.
Fletcher directs as well, and has much of the cast shout their way through the show, despite the notoriously dreadful acoustics of the Chopin Theatre. With exposed brick walls and lacking sound-absorbent materials, the Chopin turns poor enunciation into mud and shouting into white noise. Much of The Pyrates is white noise. To cite one example of many, Patrick Zielinski was nearly unintelligible as loud and blustery pirate captain Firebeard, which could have been a delightful role.
Typical of the Defiant approach, the production satirizes the swashbuckling genre with nearly non-stop action, over-the-top and self-aware acting, anachronistic use of music (Maurice Chevalier, Nat Cole, heavy metal) and language, and a whole bag of technical and stylistic tricks from film clips to puppets (a peg-leg dwarf and a giant octopus) to disco sword fights. Defiant also throws 30—count 'em, 30—bodies into the show. But the shotgun approach doesn't work this time. The Pyrates is a sloppy, no-particular-style production with fights that look amateurish despite David Wooley and Geoff Coates as fight choreographers.
Shows like this must be tight and well-oiled, with efficient plot mechanics, a strong sense of style, and pace that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats. Defiant would have done better with eight or 10 actors who really are expert at stage combat, appearing in double or triple roles and dazzling us with sword skills and clever character changes. The Pyrates also desperately needs some sexiness. In a genre generally called a bodice-ripper, there's nary a hint of eroticism.