Heidi Lynch, Tim Bowie, George Caporn, Lorenzo Martelli and Feyesa Wakijira in The Sea Queen at The Scoop, London. Picture: Liz Isles
The Sea Queen continues at The Scoop, London until 1 September 2019.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
The 2007 Boublil and Schönberg Broadway musical The Pirate Queen may have been a flop, closing after 85 performances, but it at least shone a (fictionalised) light on the interesting life of Grainne O’Malley, an important and powerful figure in 16th century Irish history whose courage and leadership led her to a powerful confrontation with Elizabeth I.
This new musical, The Sea Queen, with a book by Daniel Winder and music by Matthew Bugg, takes the same historical story as its basis, simplifying Grainne’s personal and political life down so their story can be told in a hour to a family audience.
Bugg starts his music promisingly, with melodies infused with the spirit of sea shanties. Here we introduced to Stephane MacGaraidh’s Grainne, first seen as a 12 year old girl trying to persuade her father Dubhdara (Lorenzo Martelli) to allow her to accompany him on his merchant ship.
After reluctantly allowing her on board – despite ancient superstitions about women not being allowed on ships – both Grainne and her brother Donal (George Caporn) soon prove their mettle in an attack by pirates. The swordplay on show, even accounting for the pale wooden swords, barely ever reaches levels of excitement to entertain, but MacGaraidh’s charm is enough to let that pass.
If only the book could curry the same favours. We soon flit forward 12 years, as Dubhdara faces retirement through ill health, and Grainne petitions to take his place as captain, despite patriarchal society suggesting Donal should inherit.
And here the deficiencies of Winder’s script first start to show, as Dubhdara proclaims that his daughter has the full respect of his crew and she has earned their undying loyalty – despite seeing nothing of that character growth from any quarter.
Nor do we see why, despite her father’s business apparently being to oversee some lucrative merchant routes, under Grainne’s command her crew resort to piracy. Maybe the intricacies of Anglo-Irish politics in the 1590s are a little heavy for an early evening family show, but some motivation and sense of why characters are acting the way they are would go a long way.
It also does not help that the show’s most fraught passage is a blockade. Forced inactivity hardly makes for a watchable experience, and although Melanie Gleeson’s English nobleman Bingham makes for a hardy villain, it is only when he reneges on a deal, and captures Caporn’s Donal to be executed by the Queen for treason, that anything remotely approaching interesting drama occurs.
The arrival of Queen Elizabeth I – a stately performance by Veronica Beatrice Lewis – is accompanied by Bugg’s finest musical work, a Latin choral processional. Musically, with the entire ensemble joining in, it is the most striking piece to resound around the Scoop’s Open Air space – but it is hardly the stuff of a family-oriented pirate drama.
Indeed, most of the back half of the show feels devoid of music altogether. As a result, while MacGaraidh and Lewis work well together with what they’re given, this meeting of the two most powerful women in the British Isles struggles to make much of an impression.
All in all, it is hard to feel that the O’Malley clan has been done any favours by this bowdlerised version of Grainne’s life. And while Boublil and Schönberg’s version may not have run for very long, one feels that it, rather than this version, remains the better tribute to the Queen of the Seas.
Scott Matthewman
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