Meet sports shop assistant Tom. He’s bottom of the sales chart, too busy daydreaming up pirate stories to sell football socks and scares off customers by starting sword fights with a pool noodle. In Pirates!, a children’s show from Scottish Dance Theatre and artistic director/choreographer Joan Clevillé, Tom’s friend and manager Daisy (Kassichana Okene-Jameson) urges him to give up on fantasy and live in the real world. But she soon gets dragged into some buccaneering drama when a ragtag gaggle of Tom’s imagined pirates turn up in the shop’s changing room to take the pair off for an adventure on the high seas.
The performers of SDT are more often seen in abstract contemporary dance, but they adapt impressively to children’s theatre, bringing warmth and animation to their roles – especially Jessie Roberts-Smith, who’s a natural as ringleader Captain Sandy Rogers, full of inexhaustible energy and expressiveness, and Dylan Read as a sympathetic Tom. There’s still lots of dancing though, and the sequences featuring swimming fish, or hairy zombies, or strange sea creatures in the briny deep are sewn deftly into the story, alongside acrobatics, physical humour and some very silly squelchy noises.
The crew’s games, such as walking the plank and elaborately diving off on to a crash mat, feel like amplifications of the things kids do naturally – jumping off sofas and the like – and easily connect with the young audience. The official age recommendation is 7-12 but I took a six-year-old who was thoroughly absorbed and younger children were enjoying it too. At two hours (including interval) this could’ve been a slog, but somehow Clevillé and the fizzing cast keep the pace rolling and the energy high with plot twists and easy audience interaction, plus Luke Sutherland’s soundtrack rollicks along with piratical jigs, klezmer, disco beats and more. Clevillé has created a celebration of our imaginary worlds that expands into a deeper drama about love, friendship and bravery, with a dash of feminism thrown in, making Pirates! a really engaging, fun and funny show.
• At The Place, London, until 24 December
