Pirates in Long Beach? Go swashbuckling at this campy, interactive show aboard a tall ship

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Pirating, as evidenced by centuries of stories and one of the greatest theme park rides, has long fascinated. Seafaring and sword fighting imply adventure. Dice games? Bluffing and strategy. And if you're really lucky, maybe you'll find a mermaid.
Last Call Theatre, a local interactive-focused performance group, has found a way to give us a taste of buccaneering — without the pesky consequences of being captured by the Royal Navy or succumbing to a rum-induced liver disease.
For one more weekend in Long Beach, theatergoers can live out a mini marauding fantasy on an actual ship at 'Pirates Wanted,' a limited-run revival of the troupe's 2024 show. It's theater, but it's also a choose-your-own-adventure-style game, one with branching narratives, multiple endings and even life lessons.
The show is set on board the American Pride tall ship docked at Long Beach's Pine Avenue Pier, a 130-foot schooner that today is primarily used as an education-focused vessel. Stand still and feel the lean and long boat gently rock on the waves. But you'll rarely be stationary on the wood-heavy craft. With a cast of 14 and an audience capacity of 55, 'Pirates Wanted' explores the full top deck of the ship, which is accessible via a small portable stairway.
The setup: As audience members, we are to be trained as pirates in 17th century England, with much of the cast performing in exaggerated accents. The drama: Our captain's previous ship was marooned under suspicious circumstances. To complicate matters, a long-lost sibling, also a pirate with his own troubling history, is here to judge the crew's seaworthiness. The show begins with a speech from Capt. Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño), who sternly demands a vocal 'aye' from the audience as the ground rules are laid out. Follow them, Souvanna warns, or risk being thrown into the harbor.
In moments, we are free to wander and link up with various crew members for our pirating lessons. The so-called 'treasures of the seas' aren't going to be pillaged without our help, and I soon find myself improvising sea shanties and engaging in a game of liar's dice. I stumble over relearning how to construct a knot — important, I am told, in case I'm tossed overboard and need to quickly lasso myself to a raft — but have better luck mimicking a figure 8 with my sword. We have tasks to complete — or games to play, rather — which are ultimately an excuse for conversation.
Ask a roaming bard about the previous ship's fate and a host of stories start to unravel and reveal themselves — love affairs, hidden secrets, lost maps and the requisite discontentment among the ship's keep. What would a pirate narrative be without talk, for instance, of mutiny?
'Pirates Wanted' is heavily active, and one won't discover all of the show's narrative paths. Wander, for instance, to a compartment at the ship's bow, and you may hear conspiratorial whispers. Hang in the aft, and there might be talk of a siren on board. I saw others with treasure maps, and only caught murmurs of the romantic soap operas unfolding among the crew. Love letters were lost and recovered, and at one point I was pulled aside, a pirate whispering to me to ask if there was an illicit affair on board between a member of the crew and the British Navy.
Like all of Last Call's shows, there are multiple ways to watch — or play. One can opt to be a relatively passive observer trying to overhear conversations and uncover the various storylines. But it's advised to lean in, to hop from character to character armed with questions and the willingness to go on assigned quests. Here, the latter rely heavily on gossip. Early on I was tasked, for instance, with asking the various pirates about their feelings over losing their last ship, only I was told not to use the word 'feel' in my line of questioning (after all, one must trick a pirate into vulnerability).
Throughout, 'Pirates Wanted' explores how to navigate complicated family drama and romantic relationships when value systems — you know, looting and pillaging versus not — don't align. There are metaphors if you go looking for them, specifically on having to live much of one's life in the closet, but 'Pirates Wanted' places a heavy emphasis on silliness too.
Last Call over the last three years has established itself as one of the more prolific companies on the city's immersive theater scene, regularly hosting two or three shows per year. The troupe has already announced a winter time traveling production, 'The Butterfly Effect,' set to debut Nov. 8 at Stella Coffee near Beverly Hills. 'Pirates Wanted' last year became one of Last Call's best reviewed productions.
'It definitely was our most critically and financially successful show we put on,' says Ashley Busenlener, Last Call's executive director. 'Who doesn't like pirates on an actual ship?'
'Pirates Wanted' leans campy, a vision of the lifestyle more informed by Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean than any historical fiction. It also tackles subject matter not often seen in pirate tales, such as feelings of being misunderstood and the struggle to be one's true self.
'One of the things that I often notice about pirate media is a lot of the time you see pirates and the majority of time they are white men,' Busenlener says. 'That's not who I think I pirates are. We were very intentional ... in creating a cast that we felt represented what piracy should be.'
In turn, many of the actors are female, queer and hail from diverse backgrounds. The goal, says Busenlener, was to show that anyone can be a pirate.
'Pirates are the people who were outside of society,' Busenlener says. 'They were breaking rules and laws and taking power into their own hands. That's something we wanted to reflect.'
And it's represented in one of the show's most affecting narrative branches, one in which a half-mermaid spent their life presenting only as human out of fear. It's intimate drama laced with mysticism, an adult theme ultimately handled with a hint of levity for this family-friendly show.
It also gets to the heart of Last Call's ambitious with 'Pirates Wanted.' Come for the swashbuckling — and the chance to learn some sword-fighting moves — but stay for the emotional adventure. Just don't be surprised if you leave the pier suddenly talking in a fake British accent.