Despite being part of the Story Museum’s Fairytales For Grown-Ups series, the subject of this evening’s tale, Grainne ni Mhaille (Grace O’Malley to her English enemies), was a more-than-real woman. Then again, historical women gather so much rumour and scandal they become part legend. This Irish pirate queen was no different.
With a confident stride and an easy rapport with her audience, performer Debs Newbold brings the story of her personal hero to the stage. Without a single costume change and just a chair as a prop, Debs has the magical ability to shift characters, time, and space. When her face and body contorted, you looked into Grace’s thousand-yard stare, or at the prim condescension of a sexist English captain, or the calm bulk of Grace’s most trusted warrior. Age, gender, and nationality mean nothing to this talented actress.
Throughout, Debs asks her audience to imagine a scene before them, as they would in a cinema. This is easy to do with her vivid, detailed storytelling. Her tale starts with the powerful image of Grace, a day after childbirth, taking a musket up deck to defend the ship she gave birth on from pirates. Another, more heartbreaking moment comes when she believes her eldest son has come to visit, only to realise he comes to her dead. The emotion of this moment comes from the audience realising the son’s demise before his mother. As Debs says herself, this story could truly be a Ridley Scott picture.
It’s easy to see why Debs has been called “a master of words and space” (Views From the Gods). Her use of language is evocative and unique, something I appreciate as a writer. Sir Richard Bingham, Grace’s nemesis, arrives in Ireland ‘straining at the leash’, being earlier described as Elizabeth I’s ‘guard dog’. Elizabeth herself is later described in terms of a ship when Grace comes to petition her at Greenwich Palace. It's an apt comparison; just as Grace had to learn how to navigate boats on the seas, so she must navigate the English court to save her lands.
My favourite part was the overarching parallel between Grace and Elizabeth. Two girls born of noble blood, not expected to do much more than marry and have babies, achieving so much more in their lifetimes. This is best shown in Deb’s first clever transition between the two queen’s lives. ‘900 miles to the east’ of young Grace, young Elizabeth is on her royal barge, tracing her fingers through the Thames. It comes at a moment where both girls are feeling confined by their roles as women in noble families.
Sadly, it seems Grace had far more freedom than Elizabeth, who never even left England. The best Elizabeth can do, as Debs concludes, is to blow the wind behind Grace’s sails as she glides down the Thames, back towards her second home, the sea.
Dauntless - Grace O' Malley, Pirate Queen was a feminist epic, reviving not only the story of a brave and resourceful leader, but bringing a new perspective to the life of the ‘Virgin Queen’. What makes this even more impressive is that this lifetime is told through the skilful acting and attention-grabbing storytelling of just one woman. Even if Ridley Scott got his hands on Grace’s story, I doubt he could beat this.