FRINGE 2019: Arrogant Worms song comes ALIVE in kids play

The Last Saskatchewan Pirate: A Play

Venue 14 (Holy Trinity Anglican Church)

So here’s a nifty way to get kids introduced to taxes and the inner workings of the federal government. First, find a suitable kid-friendly, politically-charged ditty clocking in at around three minutes and morph it into a half-hour play. And to boost the relate-ability factor, cast a few adolescents in the work and then let them loose at the Fringe.

Which is exactly what the players at the Beaumont Broadway group has done with The Last Saskatchewan Pirate, a musical-comedy inspired by the song of the same name by The Arrogant Worms. Just like the song, the theatrical treatment is silly and fun. It starts with the Feds plotting to increase taxes to subsidize the Prime Minister’s tennis court in a potential scandal that would make Andrew Scheer grovel.

The taxes wipe out a brother-sister farmstead in Saskatchewan. Unable to land a job, the siblings and a former bank manager go on a rampage to plunder every crop in their wake. It’s like a landlocked Jack Sparrow at work here as the motley crew befuddle the pursuing RCMP in a madcap series of spectacles – worthy of the Benny Hill soundtrack employed to heighten the hilarity.

The whole thing is great fun. But how an anti-taxation comedy dreamed up by the relatively rural community plays in Socialist Old Strathcona is another question entirely.

4 out of 5