Pump House pirate musical sets sail for Edinburgh (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Pump House pirate musical sets sail for Edinburgh

5:26pm Wednesday 1st July 2009 in

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Earlier this year, a quiz show conundrum resulted in a new musical production, Scrimshaw, a tale of high seas adventure featuring some cracking sea shanties and dance routines. A revised 75-minute version of the show comes to The Pump House Theatre next week, ahead of its Edinburgh Fringe Festival debut in August.

Playwright Karen Rhodes moved to Watford 25 years ago and ran a successful photography business before turning her hand to writing.

After producing several successful scripts, Karen explains that a question that appeared on the long-running British game show Call My Bluff where teams try and decipher the meaning of a word from one of three, often quite bizarre definitions, was the inspiration for her 18th Century nautical play.

Karen has already proved herself on the local theatre front. Three of her scripts: Liberty Creek, You are my Sunshine and Pollyanna Jones won best junior play, consecutively from 2005 to 2007, at the Bushey and SW Herts Drama Festival. The first play, a western spoof, also won a comedy award and Karen received the adjudicator’s award for her script based on WW11 evacuees.

I came across the bizarre events leading up to The War of Jenkins’ Ear, a piece of history which I felt compelled to include

Karen Rhodes

Her involvement with the Pump House Children and Youth Theatre came about when two of her children joined the ranks.

“PHCYT is entirely run by talented volunteers and I began helping out with set painting and photography. I also took a part time course in creative writing at West Herts College. The tutor, Linda Spurr, encouraged me to send off one of my short stories for publication. My writing style was heavy on dialogue and so it seemed a natural progression when I scripted a few short sketches for the PHCYT.”

With Scrimshaw, dubbed Les Miserables meets Pirates of the Caribbean, she has now fulfilled her ambition to produce a full length musical.

“While I enjoyed writing for the children’s theatre, I was eager to script something more adult for our youth members and discussed a new project with Lee Farman, the artistic director of the Pump House Children’s and Youth Theatre. Two years later, that project is on the stage.”

According to dictionary sources, ‘scrimshaw’ is the art of decorating or carving shells, bone or ivory - often created by whalers using the byproducts of harvesting marine mammals. The carvings are often elaborate and take the form of pictures and lettering highlighted by a pigment on the surface of the material.

As well as wrestling with word definitions, Karen says she spent the best part of a year researching her nautical theme.

“I undertook historical research from books, the internet, museums, documentaries and of course films; how could I not indulge in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which after all had been based on real pirates and popular myths?

“Consequently, when it came to writing the plot, trying to avoid everything that had already been done proved impossible, until I came across the bizarre events leading up to The War of Jenkins’ Ear, a piece of history which I felt compelled to include and which introduced a Spanish flavour to the musical.”

The plot leads us from England’s shores to the Americas after the death of an infamous pirate. His estranged offspring (from different mothers) are gathered for a reading of the will in Port Royal, Jamaica.

Each has an engraved piece of scrimshaw from which clues are transcribed, together they reveal the whereabouts of their father’s ill-gotten gains. But, who’ll win the booty?

This swashbuckling adventure is an intriguing mix of danger, deceit, romance, comedy and compassion, set to stunning new music by Lee Farman, artistic director at the Pump House, and composer George Wells.

Karen says “Lee and George Wells have a wealth of musical expertise between them and have written some great music for the piece, but writing lyrics is new to me and has been a real challenge. Some songs just flowed from the word go and were instant favourites with the cast, others we’ve had to rewrite. As the script has a naturalistic style we have tried to integrate the music accordingly.

“The youth have worked incredibly hard in bringing the script and characters to life and I’m very proud of them.”

Scrimshaw returns to The Pump House Theatre, Local Board Road, Watford on Tuesday, July 7 and Wednesday, July 8. Tickets: 07903 411150, www.pumphouse.info (£4)