Review: Captain Morgan parts 1 & 2, Wardrobe

Two actors, two chairs, one musician – not much from which to conjure an extravagant pirate adventure, complete with gun battle, billowing topsails and a disconcertingly weird nautical deity.  Yet Tap Tap Theatre’s Captain Morgan: The Sands of Time fills the stage and the imagination, simply through the astonishing versatility of its performers.

Ben Behrens’ story is threadbare: a Saturday-afternoon cartoon caper, three parts Captain Pugwash to one part Pirates of the Caribbean, with a streak of Dangermouse surrealism to spice things up. Captain Morgan is given a treasure map (obviously) showing the location of the Sands of Time, whose possessor can control the flow of time, and must race to get there before his arch-enemy Renshaw of the Royal Navy – assisted by the sea god Poseidon – beats him to it.

Performers Joe Newton and Edward Richards populate the stage with a spectacular array of characters, each clearly defined with a change of voice and posture, switching between them at lightning speed in a dazzling display of high-speed characterisation. It’s a high-risk undertaking which could easily tumble into audience confusion, yet the clarity with which each character is defined makes each one instantly recognisable.

And there are other clever touches that suggest that this show is far from the chaotic fun-filled tumble it might appear: David Ridley’s music, almost unnoticed yet providing a constant and essential soundtrack; some inventive physical theatre (one man capturing the essence of a billowing sail); and carefully defined images that linger in the mind to be echoed later when the Sands of Time start running backwards.

Captain Morgan… does not offer a sophisticated evening out (nor, at just an hour, a long one). The show has the bubbling, almost hyperactive energy of a street performance – at times you feel that its natural home is Bath’s Abbey Courtyard, in front of laughing tourists rather than a real theatre.

This is a high-energy whirl, big on spectacle and slim on plot, loud and cartoonish. Yet there is plenty of intelligence and talent at work underneath its brash exterior. And, like all the best Saturday-afternoon cartoons, it finishes with a cliff-hanger, leaving the audience keen to come back to experience its companion piece, Captain Morgan and the Sea of Souls. 

****

The Sea of Souls picks up where The Sands of Time leaves off: Captain Morgan in possession of the Sands of Time, and making free with the ability to travel hither and yon in the temporal spectrum. To thwart an attempt by the evil World Association of Time Continuity Handlers (run, like most international organisations, by supercilious Frenchmen) to recapture the Sands, Morgan and his trusty bo’sun Hammond find themselves in the Wild West.

Using the same quick-change character shifts as part 1, the second instalment moves up to a greater level of sophistication, achieving cinematic effects like cross-cuts and split screens by brilliantly manipulating the audience’s focus. The plot of part 2 is even flimsier than its predcessor, but the Wild West setting allows Newton and Edwards to truly let rip with a panoply of stock Western characters, and the ability to conjure a full scene through the power of suggestion reaches its zenith in a horseback chase across the prairie.

If there is a criticism of this production, it lies not on the stage but with the audience. Good people of Bristol (especially those from the University’s Drama department), please bear in mind that when watching a show by your friends, hooting like a gibbon at every tiny hint of comedy is neither supportive nor likely to make your fellow punters appreciate the show more.

Audience aside, both instalments of Captain Morgan are worth seeing not just for their simple entertainment value, but for the skill and versatility displayed by the performers with seemingly effortless precision. Funny, but also very, very clever.

Captain Morgan and the Sands of Time and Captain Morgan and the Sea of Souls continue at the Wardrobe Theatre until Saturday (alternate evenings, double bill Sat eve). For more info and to book tickets, visit www.thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/captain-morgane-sea-of-souls