Bloody Bess: A tale of Piracy and Revenge BackStage Theatre Company
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Gordon’s shows often drew on literary sources, from Voltaire’s Candide to Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. But he was equally enthralled by classic genre films. His 1971 sci-fi trilogy Warp! (cowritten with former Reader critic Lenny Kleinfeld) paid tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.
In 1974, the Organic came up with another Hollywood homage. Conceived by Gordon and scripted by ensemble members John Ostrander (later a writer of comic books, including the Star Wars: Legacy series) and William J. Norris, Bloody Bess: A Tale of Piracy and Revenge took its inspiration from swashbuckling adventure sagas like Captain Blood and The Black Swan. But, in typical Organic style, it put an irreverent and (at the time) innovative spin on the genre, viewing it through the prism of the women’s liberation and black power movements.
Sound effects and music are crucial elements in any good pirate production, and the Storefront’s movie theater-quality sound system is a huge asset. Composer Tom Haigh’s wonderfully bombastic incidental music evokes the scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Alfred Newman, while sound designer Miles Polaski fills the air with the squawking of seagulls, the roar of cannon fire, the rolling of waves against the hull, and the splash of bodies falling overboard. Rachel Sypniewski’s rich-looking costumes evoke the story’s late-16th-century setting, and scenic designer Heath Hays locates the action in and around the Caribbean by turning the stage floor into a map.
