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“We really enjoyed the show. It was fantastic, in fact, my only complaint is that it finished before I was ready for it to end. I could easily have sat through it all over again, straight away.”
Audience member Nov 2009.
One feisty female captain
One sweet slave
Four shanghaied kids
One murderously ill-tempered ship’s cook
One over-protective parent
One crew: boatswain, gunner, first mate, carpenter
The speel
Forget Jack Sparrow, Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. When it comes to wit, finagling and sea roving they are no match for Captain Jaqui Delahaye. Well they wouldn’t be if she hadn’t been washed overboard and her vessel shiplocked and landwrecked by her clueless crew! There’s no food to eat but everyone is mildly peckish. If they can source victuals, slaves and a sea to sail, they’ll be as good as the gold in their treasure chest.
This is an outdoor production.
For the first time, the Fruities have built a set that grows from a 12 metre flat bed trailer. The ship’s rigging allows for swashbuckling acts at high altitude, alongside wonderful ground based acts. The high physical skill level, the comedy acrobatics and larrikin humour of the Fruities is beautifully showcased aboard a galleon sailing ship.
Cast & Crew
Director: Markus Michalowski
Co-Director/Choreographer: Jodie Farrugia
Composer/Musician/Sound Design: Steph O’Hara
Stage Design: Markus Michalowski & Dave Austin
Costume Design: Wiggy Brennan
Tour Manager: Madge Fletcher
Trainers Shu Lin Dai, Scott Grayland, Sergei Okhai, Per Westman & Phil Witt
Cast: 10 children + 2 adults
Duration: 50 minutes, no interval
Audience: General. Young families. Ages 3 -17 years.
Review
In the first few minutes of Pirates the audience is snarled at, pounced on and abused. The ship’s cook’s ill- tempered diatribes from his galley, which doubles as an orchestra pit, book-end the story of a sorry crew of pirates. Why the unwelcoming greeting? Well, they are shipwrecked on the Border (ie here at the Gateway), the Captain has been washed overboard, the Cook’s supply of rats is low so he is after some spare kids to put in his pot. And we are landlubbers so he hates us anyway!
The stage is a three- mast barque on the back of a 40- foot flat bed trailer, with rope ladders up to the masts, providing a trapeze with a difference. Reaching the Crow’s Nest requires Chinese pole technique and a mini tramp below stage offers some surprise ways of getting on board. Walking the plank is, predictably, never just that – there isn’t much walking in this show.
Pirates relies on those traditional circus skills that the Fruities have in abundance: juggling, tumbling, rope climbing and all the rest (though no chairs or bikes this time). However they have added a whole new physical vocabulary to their repertoire including stage fighting and fencing. The usual truckloads of energy – literally – are there as are the athleticism and capacity to perform multiple feats simultaneously.
The clowning displays greater subtlety than previously evident – a sort of Chaplinesque farce mixed with knockabout – that attests to the Fruities’ overall development as performers. It is the usual “All Hands on Deck” with regard to teamwork and mutual respect, even when duelling to the death or tossing each other overboard. Initially I found extraneous noise somewhat distracting. Traffic on The Causeway is close by, and several planes flew quite low, but this is just one of the standard perils of outdoor performance. And the sheer energy of the performance swept us along so completely that the problem came to seem quite insignificant.
Costumes provided interest and variety; one renegade may have escaped from Braveheart complete with kilt & sleeveless fleece. An Italian nonna in widow weeds never completely disguised her cheeky masculinity as she bounded over the heads of all around. A sort of Mr Toad the Washerwoman, with added acrobatic prowess and a touch of the risqué.
Captain Jacqui was able to take on the rogues at their own games, fencing with precision and flair, then transforming into a graceful creature twirling around the rigging. She was no fair maid in need of protection from the men, but a formidable adversary.
We were treated to some novel dance routines. I’m sure I saw Riverdance, Tyrolean knee-slapping and a highland jig or two, though not necessarily in that order, or indeed in any order at all.
An aerialist soared up from the rigging. He was exactly that “daring young man on the flying trapeze”, quite unperturbed by the skeleton dangling a few feet away
A Sea monster puppet deriving from the Chinese Lion won applause as it (powered by some of the younger performers) appeared to right all wrongs and save the day. Or did it? Were the baddies defeated? It doesn’t matter really. The narrative thread was a thin one, something to showcase all this remarkable talent, which like the up and coming Fruities’ recent show Get Smarter continues to entertain and enrich our community. Director Markus Michalowski and choreographer Jodie Farrugia, along with all the others who nurture and guide the performers should be proud.
It’s a privilege to watch them, all young, all enthused – some slightly tentative, some exuding confidence and a couple with “this is what I was born to do” stamped on their faces.
Kathleen Bragge (Border Mail, Nov 2009)