Scottish Dance Theatre, Pirates! review ★★★★★

As host to Pirates! The Place is suitably lit up and decorated for the occasion, with even the bar staff wearing piratical hats, so that you get in the mood even before entering the auditorium.

The colourful printed programme was created with the younger audiences in mind and is inspired: it offers a clear description of the main characters, a detailed image of a pirate ship illustrating its various sections and proper designations, a recipe for pirates' soup, colouring-in spaces and games and, of course, a cast list with the dancers’ biographies written specifically for children.

This is one of the most useful programmes I’ve seen in many years of going to the theatre – I take my (pirate’s) hat off to Scottish Dance Theatre.

But what of the show itself? It’s vibrant, colourful, very busy and often funny, but not until the very end does it attempt to involve the children in the audience, and at nearly two hours’ duration it is too long.

Matthias Strahm’s clever, extremity adaptable multi-purpose set is, first of all, the sports shop where best friends Daisy, the manageress (Kassichana Okene-Jameson), and Tom (Dylan Read) work. Well, ‘work’ is not quite the right word for Tom, a dreamer who spends more time writing pirate stories than selling trainers.

And so, inevitably, Tom’s world starts taking over the real world, and before you know it the sports shop becomes a pirate ship, led by the irrepressible Captain Sandy Rogers (Jessie Roberts Smith) and crewed by her motley collection of eccentrically dressed pirates.

Scottish Dance Theatre, PIrates! Photo: Henry Curtis
Dancing interludes to Luke Sutherland’s rhythmic, energetic score, occasionally featuring sea shanties, are interspersed with the dialogue, reminding us that Scottish Dance Theatre is a company of very good dancers, but, I felt, going on far too long.

There is, of course, a baddie, the fearsome Admiral O’Greed (Ben McEwan), who’s determined to rid the seas of pirates; and for a while he takes control of this motley crew… but there is, of course, a big reveal leading to a happy end.

Pirates! is the first work for children by Joan Clevillé, Scottish Dance Theatre’s artistic director; and maybe practice will eventually make perfect.

The show is jolly and imaginative, but not involving; and by the interval many of the children in the audience seemed more excited at the prospect of ice cream than at returning for the second half, which, for all that it brought on weird and wonderful underwater creatures and gave Dylan Read the opportunity to show off his remarkable gifts for howling like a dog, felt like a bit of a stretch.

No matter: Pirates! is on the whole rather enjoyable, and the sheer talent and commitment of its nine-strong cast carries it and us (mostly) with it.

Age Guidance: 7–12 but everybody is welcome