A Pirate’s Lullaby Goodman Theatre Studio
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Daisy Armstrong, a shy, pregnant history professor, travels to North Manitou Island in Lake Michigan with her mother Natalie, an obsessively conformist, highly intelligent alcoholic. The government is purchasing their land to create a national park, so this will be their last visit to the place that’s been a sanctuary for three generations. With the help of the spirits of Anne Bonney and Mary Reade, two British pirates who are the subject of her latest research, Daisy comes into her own as a mother, a woman, and a proud eccentric.
It’s a credit to Litwak, Booth, and their excellent cast that Daisy’s journey takes the form of an ambiguous passage into an uncertain sanctuary. Booth’s direction emphasizes the camaraderie and antagonism between various characters, allowing Litwak’s bitter wit and intellectual playfulness to ride on emotional tides that give the production depth. The main characters are complicated and sometimes unnervingly vulnerable, living as they do on the margins of sanity and comfort, inventing their lives and facing conflict with a battle cry: “The fun begins!”
It’s exciting to see smart theater that shows the highs and lows of putting up a fight–of giving birth to a baby, a culture, and a self that we want to live with. Litwak shows us that we stand both alone and with our ancestors, chosen and imaginary; according to Anne Bonney, the struggle is to “steal what makes you happy…and then defend it with your life.”
