Bloody Bess

Decades before Boublil and Schönberg’s bloated, lifeless Pirate Queen washed up on these shores, Chicago’s storied Organic Theater Company introduced audiences to a far more interesting female pirate, the fiery Bloody Bess. First produced in 1974, the melodrama tells the story of Elizabeth Presberty, a high-born 17th-century woman who starts the play as captive of a buccaneering ship called the God’s Love and ends up becoming its captain. Aided by her gruff rival turned bosom friend, Annie Bailey, Presberty’s marauding is motivated less by greed than by her desire to avenge herself on a dastardly naval officer who has killed her father and sexually assaulted her. The play’s noteworthiness lies in its combination of swashbuckling spectacle with unapologetically ferocious feminism.

In BackStage Theatre’s sprightly revival, director Coates’s background as a fight choreographer comes in handy with the nearly nonstop action sequences. For the most part eschewing high-flying acrobatics, Coates takes a visceral, ultrarealistic approach to staging the violence so that it seems both surprising and remarkably immediate. Eva Swan and Stephanie Repin, as Bess and Annie, respectively, start off a bit tepidly but find their characters’ fire in time to win our admiration in spite of their bloody deeds. Frankly, after all these months of watching Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama get pilloried for being strong women, it’s comforting to see a couple of ladies kicking ass.