Get on board, baby. It’s Pansexual Pregnant Piracy at the Soho Theatre.
Creators Eleanor Colville, Ro Suppa, and Robbie Taylor Hunt also make up three quarters of the four-person cast singing and dancing their way through the totally possibly true and occasionally even accurate life story of real-life eighteenth-century pirate Anne Bonny.
Played with great aplomb and shimmering gravitas by Suppa, Anne is a solid lead audiences root for as easily as she uproots gender conventions. Colville’s panachefull presentation as Calico Jack is delicious and the joy of creative performance shines out of every porthole. Elizabeth Chu rounds out the cast in a practically perfect performance as “hot wet babe” Mary Read, and an even more transfixing interlude as an even wetter fish. Creator, performer, and director Robbie Taylor Hunt too takes on a rather animalistic role as the ship’s parrot/drag queen, Ivana Cracker, and is consistently hilarious in his acting, his staging, and his puppeteering. He and his collaborators have here helmed a loose moral-ed, tightly crafted play where hell-raising hedonism meets hard hitting, heart-warming heroics.
The sets and costumes both by Caitlin Mawhinney are exceptionally whimsical and are both friendly to their storytelling aims pointedly conveying setting and character while also packing some tremendously fun surprises into the show’s visual language. Catja Hamilton’s lighting design is similarly impactful, but it is in the realm of sound that this show really stuns. Designer Anna Short seamlessly blends audio cues with live a acapella singing from the cast that perfectly complements Erin Rydal and Simon McKenzie’s orchestration and musical direction. Every song is a treasure trove of clever lyrics and pleasant harmonies bedazzled with diverting choreography by Sara Green. Enric Ortuño’s fight direction is equally engaging and exists on a par with some very fun moments of slapstick intimacy.
Altogether deranged and delightful, Pansexual Pregnant Piracy packs more than a punch.
Playing until 13th April, https://sohotheatre.com/events/pansexual-pregnant-piracy/
Reviewer: Kira Daniels
Reviewed: 28th March 2024
North West End UK Rating:
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