Synopsis Under the Black Flag is set around the historical pirate republic of Rabat, following the execution of Charles I and the installation of Cromwell and the new Commonwealth. This wild tale of high seas and low politics exposes the class hatreds and religious hypocrisy of the 17th century as John Silver and his motley crew of disaffected radicals seek freedom on the seas, under a pirate flag. The production features bare flesh and filthy language. Edges of Rome Season
Simon Bent’s new play Under the Black Flag received its world premiere at Shakespeare’s Globe on Tuesday (18 July 2006), with a press night rescheduled from 14 July, following previews from 9 July (See News, 11 Jan 2006).
Part of new artistic director Dominic Dromgoole’s emphasis on new work at the South Bank landmark, Bent’s play, which has the unwieldy subtitle “The Early Life, Adventures and Pyracies (sic) of the Famous Long John Silver before he lost his leg”, is set around the 17th-century pirate republic of Rabat, where John Silver and his crew of political radicals are feeling disaffected. Ye be warned, the play, directed by Paines Plough artistic director Roxana Silbert, “features bare flesh and filthy language”.
First night critics were divided by Under the Black Flag, with opinions ranging from “enthralling” to “uneven” and “ramshackle”. While Whatsonstage.com’s Michael Coveney enjoyed the adventure on the high seas, many of his peers found it lacking and, by the end of the play, which some deemed over-long and confused, they were flagging.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com – “For his enthralling new play, the first presented in Dominic Dromgoole’s regime at the Globe, Simon Bent has imagined an early life for Silver, long before he led his motley crew of buccaneers on the Hispaniola in search of Captain Flint’s booty…. Bent’s play, which stretches over five boisterous acts… is directed with considerable brio and panache by Roxana Silbert…. In truth, it's actually quite hard to follow exactly what's going on…. The fine Scottish actor Cal MacAninch as Silver is projected through the middle of these escapades en route to emerging, more or less, as a fully paid-up terrorist…. MacAninch, lean, mean and hollow-eyed, cuts a charismatic figure in a company that seems to have come alive in the demands of the play. For, although Bent conceived of his story as a film script, there's no doubt that the writing rises to the challenge of the theatre.”
Fiona Mountford in the Evening Standard - “For the second time recently, pirates buckle and swash across our cultural radar. Sadly, this drama manages to outlast the already lengthy Pirates of the Caribbean film, without offering the considerable compensating charms of Johnny Depp.... Indeed, when Silver's limb is still resolutely intact at 10.20pm, this audience member felt like flying the white flag…. Bent has obviously done his background research with, for example, mention of the historically accurate pirates' parliament. Yet veracity keeps rubbing up against the awkward fact that men with velvet pantaloons and gold hoops in their ears provoke giggles…. Large swathes of this script could be made to walk the plank and we wouldn't notice any difference. Cal MacAninch's Silver is an alarming charisma-vacuum, but Nicolas Tennant has the right idea as arch rival Kees de Keyser, camping it up slightly in Roxana Silbert's uneven production.”
Michael Billington in Guardian - “Simon Bent's piratical drama turns out to be a ramshackle pantomime in which potentially serious ideas are overlaid by an air of Carry On Buccaneering…. Behind the play lies an interesting Brechtian idea: that piracy is a reflection of the law-abiding world. While Cromwell's new model army formally processes, the pirates sing their own choral anthems and, even as Cromwell dissolves parliament, the pirates form their own anarchic assembly. But instead of pursuing this notion of the links between order and disorder, Bent chases down any number of blind alleys…. the whole thing strikes me as a misfire in which Bent's good intentions are subverted by his own discursiveness and the camp heartiness of the Globe audience.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times - “Audiences at the Globe are always quick to see the comedy in things, and Bent and his director Roxana Silbert encourage the gigglers even at torrid moments, giving us a black comedy or comic melodrama awkwardly marooned between Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Bond’s political farce Early Morning…. Don’t ask me to explain why (Silver) performs a slice of Hamlet with his best friend, a black slave actually called Hamlet, or why Hamlet, tortured and murdered by the vindictive Keyser, ends up as a ghost enjoining revenge. But there is a lot of violence, some very nasty, as the scene switches from Barbary to an England where Silver’s wife is also tormented and killed…. Lines that seem oddly facetious intervene… undermining a play whose subject seems to be the moral erosion of a decent, generous man…. my timbers remained decidedly unshivered.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - “The writing often smells of research. Bent has learnt that pirate ships were far more democratic than those in the Navy and that the buccaneers had their own parliament on the Moroccan Atlantic coast. The dramatist also draws laborious contemporary parallels. Cromwell's war on pirates is equated with Bush's and Blair's war on terror, especially after Silver converts to Islam and marries the daughter of the Sultan of Morocco…. What's missing in the show is swashbuckling flair and narrative momentum…. At almost three hours, Roxana Silbert's production is far too long, and desperately lacking in the ‘wow’ factor. The battles are lame, the actors too often inaudible, and it is often hard to work out exactly what's going on.”
Long John Silver, the piratical villain of Treasure Island, was a fictional character based by Robert Louis Stevenson on his one-legged literary sidekick in Edinburgh, William Henley. For his enthralling new play, the first presented in Dominic Dromgoole’s regime at the Globe, Simon Bent has imagined an early life for Silver, long before he led his motley crew of buccaneers on the Hispaniola in search of Captain Flint’s booty.
So, there are no cries of “Jim, lad” or squawks from a parrot or even choruses of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.” There are, however, a series of fairly rousing choruses composed by Orlando Gough, the first of which welcomes the joyful day of King Charles I’s execution – the first scene of the play – with a cry of “freedom”… and more beer. There follows an exhortation by Silver’s father Ebenezer (Howard Ward) to remove trousers, which he promptly does, to the audience’s delight.
The outline of Bent’s play, which stretches over five boisterous acts and is directed with considerable brio and panache by Roxana Silbert, follows Silver’s disillusion with the new protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, his decision to abandon his wife and child, his encounters on the high seas with rival pirates, notably the swaggering Dutchman Kees de Keyser (Nicholas Tennant) known as “the king of the Barbary coast”, his conversion to Islam while insinuating himself with the Sultan of Morocco (Joseph Marcell), and the details of how he came by his soubriquet (“Is it short, or is it long?” is the gist of an intimate locker room enquiry) and lost his leg in a battle.
In truth, it's actually quite hard to follow exactly what's going on as the action sprawls across the ocean and the pirates create their own spurious form of waterlogged democracy as an antidote to the political injustices at home. An informative programme note fills in the background on the 17th-century piratical parliament of Bou Regreg based on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Here, we even find a chap called Hamlet (Mo Sesay) who is branded in the eyes and disposed of in a hessian body bag.
The fine Scottish actor Cal MacAninch as Silver is projected through the middle of these escapades en route to emerging, more or less, as a fully paid-up terrorist. His raggle-taggle army includes names later familiar to us in Treasure Island: One-Eye Pew, Black Jack and little Ben Gunn (Paul Hunter), not yet the mad recluse of Stevenson’s novel. MacAninch, lean, mean and hollow-eyed, cuts a charismatic figure in a company that seems to have come alive in the demands of the play.
For although Bent conceived of his story as a film script, there's no doubt that the writing rises to the challenge of the theatre, and its “out on a spree”-minded audience - proof (if any was still needed) that the size of the tiny Bush theatre, which Dromgoole ran for many years, diminishes the scale and ambition of dramatic writing, however quirky or incendiary it may be, and has stunted the growth of countless playwrights.
I thought this was poor. The actors equipped themselves well and managed to stay focused despite the number of people leaving and within this, there's probably a decent 2 hour play desperate to get out but all sense of drama is swiftly drained by dialogue that lags. It makes you realise just how good Shakespeare is! - 82.43.197.100)
10 Aug 06
There is much to recommend this play. Cal Macininch plays John Silver with an energised intensity that drives the play along. There are fantastic supporting performances, including Trevor Fox as One Eyed Pue and John Dougall as Oliver Cromwell. The language is often delicious, though there are scenes that felt unescessary and allowed the energy of the piece to sag. There was plenty of scurrilous vibrancy in this production and it worked well in the theatre space: good use was made of the crowd. I do very much think The Globe can also be a place of delicacy and sensitivity and I hope there will be more of that in the future. This wasn't that kind of production, but it was true to itself and enjoyable for it. - 82.35.23.137)
20 Jul 06
It's a good idea and in performance it is fun, but it needs judicious editing (particularly the first half), as it does not sustain it's 2hrs 45 mins. Amother case of less would probably be more. - 86.130.219.140)
18 Jul 06
Panto season has started early this year! The Globe's production of SImon Bent's Under the Black Flag is the most pantomimic thing you're ever likely to see midsummer. This aspect of it, along with the fact its about pirates, should make it ideal summer holiday fare for the kids (and a good introduction to the Globe) were it not for such things as full frontal (male) nudity and obscenity (which mainly take place within the play's opening ten minutes and seem to add very little to it) and plenty of gore through out.
The premise of Under the Black Flag is to fill in the blackstory of Long John Silver, which Bent has extended backwards so as to begin in Cromwell's England. In Bent's version, Silver, along with his father and brother, are lay preachers during the interregnum, extolling the virtues of hippyish nudity and self-expression. This brings them into the sights of Cromwell, who executes the father and has the brothers pressganged into the navy. After being boarded by pirates, Silver sets the captain adrift after killing his son. This is played for laughs. The Captain, of course, swears revenge which takes shape later in the play.
Bent clearly has tried to incorporate contemporary politics into his work. The pirates have much contact with Muslims and SIlver, while marrying the Sultan's beautiful daughter, bizarrely converts to Islam. Whatever political points Bent is trying to make is lost in the sheer badness of much of the writing, an indication of which is when Silver's daughter, in what is probably a homage to the Globe's cross-dressing past, duly arrives on board Silver's ship disguised as a cabin-boy with the assumed name of Roger Flint. This elicited the time-honoured joke Roger the cabinboy.
There is a scene in which the marooned Captain returns (after spending eight years on a cannibal Island and eating his own son en route) and orders the ship to be serached for weapons which no one can find. This is an obvious reference to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but like so much else in this play, leads nowhere.
None of this is helped by Orlando Gough's feeble music which add greatly to its school production feel.
- 87.80.80.50)
16 Jul 06
Reading the programme notes of Under The Black Flag, the new play at the Globe, is infinitely more rewarding than watching it. About the early days of Long John Silver (long refers to the length of his member), a fictitious character who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the play is rambling, long and slow. Most of the characters are shallowly written and the actors have trouble creating credible performances. Read Robert Louis Stevenson instead,or watch the film with Robert Newton.
- 194.106.62.200)
A rebuild of Shakespeare's original Globe theatre close to the original site. Society of London Theatre member. Note: Booking opened March 3rd 1996. Tickets for performances range from £5 (standing in the yard) to £37.50 for the best gallery seats). Induction loop facilities. Wheelchair facilities. Extensive education programme. Restaurant, cafe and bar. Dark during the winter but the museum and venue remain open. One of the few London venues with Sunday performances. The Globe Theatre Season runs from April to October. The Globe Education Centre is located in Park Street and runs an educational autumn season.
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