The Royal Pyrate
Music & Lyrics by Jason Landon Marcus; Book by Chas LiBretto; Directed by: Emily Abrams
The Waterfront Barge Museum | 290 Conover Street, in Brooklyn
Playing Saturday and Sunday evenings August 16 through 31
Photo Credit: Geve Penaflor
If you should find yourself wandering the misty edges of Red Hook, Brooklyn, and spy a curious assemblage of music, laughter, and the unmistakable clomp of booted feet upon wooden planks, fear not: you’ve stumbled upon The Royal Pyrate, a swashbuckling new musical adventure that has dropped anchor this month aboard the floating curiosity that is the Waterfront Barge Museum. This rollicking world premiere—brimming with brine, ballast, and a bootlegger's spirit—is a spirited creation from the talents of composer-lyricist Jason Landon Marcus and book writer Chas Libretto, who have taken the rough-cut legend of “Black Sam” Bellamy and burnished it into something bright, brassy, and wonderfully briny.
In choosing Bellamy—the dashing sailor-turned-pirate whose brief but sensational career pillaged and dazzled along the American coastline and Caribbean in the early 1700s—the creators have found a historical figure just tantalizingly obscure enough to ignite the imagination. There are whispers of romance, streaks of revolution, and more than a few cannon blasts of theatrical possibility. All are realized with gusto in a production that is far from polished, and all the better for it: it swings, staggers, sings, and sword-fights its way through an evening of delight that feels as handcrafted as a ship’s wheel and as unexpected as a mermaid at a town meeting.
It is a stunning reinterpretation of the Bellamy legend—a tempestuous, salt-soaked yarn refracted through the lens of political ambition, romantic desperation, and Puritan repression, with more than a few winks at our modern conscience: “There always be gold for wars, but never for our strugglin’ families. Life sure is difficult in 1715!”... In this daring revision of the well-worn tale, our would-be pirate prince, Sam Bellamy (a rugged, yearning Danny Hayward), is no bold privateer to start, but a disillusioned ex-sailor turned petty smuggler and part-time schemer. Stranded in colonial Cape Cod—a bleak outpost half-drowned in fog and Crown corruption—he shares a hustler’s life with his loyal compatriot Paulsgrave Williams, both of them scraping by under the watchful eye of a local magistrate-slash-reverend-slash-opportunist (Korie Lee Blossey, devilishly charismatic in the dual role).
Bellamy’s heart, however, belongs not to the sea just yet, but to Mary Hallet (a luminous Maggie Likcani), a sharp-minded, nonconforming young woman whose soul seems just as chafed by Puritan constraint as Bellamy’s. Theirs is a love both tender and doomed; Sam’s poverty makes him unworthy in the eyes of Mary’s family, and when a pregnancy seals their fate, the pressure to escape—to provide, to transform—boils over.
Enter: a stolen treasure map, pried from the cold hands of a long-dead pirate’s corpse, and with it, a dream. A sunken Spanish galleon lies waiting, and with it, the chance at a new beginning. Bellamy teams up with the dashing and ever-pragmatic Paulsgrave Williams (played with roguish charm by Lauren Molina), and the pair sets off not merely in search of gold, but of liberation—from monarchy, from morality, from the fatalism that binds them to the dirt of Cape Cod.
But as with all great sea tales, fortune’s tide turns quickly. They are intercepted, then absorbed, by none other than the dreaded pirate Blackbeard—played, again, by Blossey, in a transformation so vivid it feels less like dual casting and more like theatrical transmogrification. First adversaries, then allies, then mutineers, our heroes seize command and usher in a new era of piratical enterprise, driven by egalitarian ideals and a dash of reckless idealism. Bellamy's ship becomes not merely a vessel, but a floating experiment in radical democracy—piracy with a manifesto.
Meanwhile, back in the rigid world of sticks and stocks, Mary gives birth alone and is left to reckon with the harsh consequences of her independence. When yet another tragedy strikes her young life, the community that once ostracized her now hunts her as a witch—a haunting commentary on how women, too often, are punished simply for surviving.
This reimagining doesn’t just retell the Bellamy myth; it reinvigorates it, charging it with the tension of class, gender, and power struggles that still echo through the modern day. It’s a tale of freedom sought and freedom thwarted, of men chasing legacy and women paying the price. It is, above all, a stormy, seductive voyage into the romantic lie of reinvention—and the brutal truth of who gets left behind.
From its opening notes, The Royal Pyrate sets a tone both muscular and mischievous. The music is wholly acoustic and wholly alive—thanks in no small part to the ensemble cast, many of whom double as the band. Marcus’s score is a tangle of sea shanty, folk, pop, and acoustic punk, braided together with sharp, spry lyrics and arrangements that surprise without sacrificing heart. There is a sinewy strength to these tunes—built for belting across the waves, but equally at home beneath a proscenium, or here within the confines of the barge..
Emily Abrams’s staging, meanwhile, bursts with vitality. This is a director unafraid to lean into theatricality with both boots: supported by Juli & Alex Abene’s period costumes that feel at once weather-worn and winking, Danny Hayworth’s fight scenes that lurch with real menace and real comedy, Zach Birnbaum’s intrepid sound design and a band of performers clearly relishing every salty syllable of the text and note of the score.
In the leading role of Sam Bellamy, Hayward delivers a performance that is equal parts Broadway bravado and buccaneering bravura. One might call to mind a rugged Ramin Karimloo dipped in Freddie Mercury’s swagger: a piercing tenor, charismatic presence, and a surprising emotional gravitas that anchors the show’s more wistful moments. His chemistry with Likcani’s Mary Hallet—reimagined here as a headstrong proto-revolutionary with a sharp eye and a sharper tongue—is palpable. Their haunting duet, “Fight For You,” is an impassioned declaration. Likcani sings with unvarnished sincerity, particularly in the aching ballad “Never to Come Home,” a number of such stark intimacy (with Marcus himself accompanying her solo on acoustic guitar) that time seems to briefly stall, the sea falling still.
But the show’s coup de théâtre may well be Blossey’s magnificent turn in dual roles: as the fearsome, full-throated Blackbeard and the morally bankrupt Reverend Treat. His presence is titanic, his baritone booming, and his command of the stage nearly piratical in itself. That he does not entirely steal the show is testament to the strength of his shipmates—including the blazing Molina, who storms through the male role of Paulsgrave Williams like a cannonball with a conscience. As both narrator and participant, Molina is a kinetic force, her vocals darting from comic bluster to emotional nuance with precision and panache.
The supporting players, too, contribute mightily to the evening’s success: Charley Layton’s accordion-playing under duress draws riotous laughter, and the ensemble numbers—from the devil-may-care “Madagascar” with its riff on the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” to the thrilling “The Weapon”—crackle with invention and energy.
All told, The Royal Pyrate sails on winds of genuine theatrical exuberance. Its weaknesses—a sometimes murky plot, occasional lapses into over-explicit political allegory, and a few prosy lyrics—are more the result of ambition than oversight. Indeed, the show's expansive scope, attempting to marry the revolutionary fervor of the 18th century with the political unease of our own time, is bold—even if not always tonally seamless.
But what a voyage it is. Even when the narrative compass spins, the ship stays afloat—buoyed by music, character, and joy. The creators have struck gold in rough waters, delivering a show that, like its titular pirate, is brimming with heart, grit, and the irrepressible call of freedom. The Royal Pyrate is a raucous, resonant, rum-soaked revel of a musical. See it before it sets sail for distant shores - or better yet, Broadway!
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on August 28, 2025. All rights reserved.