The Midnight Train Crossing

The set was mostly covered by the pirate ship, two levels, with enough rope to suggest sails that vanished up in the ceiling. But that was in the background initially - there was "sand" and a sand castle, and a menu and sign indicating that we were near the Crab Shack.
"How I Became a Pirate" is a children's book that I have not read - all that I knew was that it was probably going to be cute, given that it's the final show of the series. It's about a kid who runs away to become a pirate for an afternoon. And, according to the paper, it was a musical. Unfortunately, since it was an original musical, there wasn't a song list.

I thought that the show got off to a slightly slow start, with the kid, Jeremy Jacob, playing with his pirate action figures on the sand castle. His parents were just voices as they dismissed his comments about seeing a pirate ship.
He complained a little about being told what to do, to wear sunblock, and said that pirates never have to wear sunblock. During this moment when he was alone on the stage, whenever he'd mention pirates, there would be voices off stage going "yo ho ho" and other pirate-y things.
However, once the pirates arrived, the show took off.

The pirates are in search of a digger, someone to bury their treasure for them. They see Jeremy Jacob (Austin Zdziarski) playing with a shovel, and decided that he will be a good digger, so the captain, Braid Beard, a large man with a braid dangling from his beard, invites him to come along. Jeremy Jacob agrees, as long as he's home in time for soccer practice.
So, Jeremy's off to join the pirate crew consisting of: Captain Braid Beard (Todd Denning), First Mate Seymour Braunschwagger (John Nicholson), Sharktooth (Lee Becker), their (French) cook Pierre (James Valcq), Scurvy Dog (Susan Nicholson) and Bo Johnson's character, who is credited as "Max" but they kept calling him something like "Arrrr-gile" He had a parrot on his shoulder that they would all take turns making talk. Those were the adults in the pirate cast, then we had the young performers: Swill (Teddy Warren), Land Ho (Andrew Oppmann) and Steve (Ashley Patin).

The show was definitely a musical - there was a lot more singing than speaking actually. As I mentioned, I don't have a song list, but to sum up...
There was a song about inviting Jeremy Jacob to join them, there was a song about learning pirate manners, about speaking like a pirate, about playing soccer, about how pirates never brush their teeth, about how Sharktooth is really a sensitive guy, about trying to find a place to bury a treasure, about the importance of having a home, and about how pirates can be found everywhere.
My favorites were the song about speaking like a pirate, playing soccer, Sharktooth's song, and the final song. It's entirely possible that I've forgotten something. There were a lot of songs.
The music was provided by the cast, primarily Seymour Braunschwagger on guitar and Scurvy Dog on violin, and occasionally other people picking up instruments. It was a running joke that all that Seymour Braunschwagger did was play the guitar - on more than one occasion he was asked to do something, and he reminded the asker that all he did was play the guitar.

One thing that is worth mentioning is the scene change from the beach to the boat. After they recruited Jeremy Jacob, one of the pirates mentioned to the captain that some of the crew were getting restless because it had been a long time since they plundered. So, Braid Beard gave the order, steal the chair, and the sign, and the sand castle.
Braid Beard stole the action figures himself, and kept them tucked in his pocket through most of the show.
Then, another one of the pirates mentioned that the cat box needed to be refilled, so they stole the beach too.
Then, Braid Beard was explaining to Jeremy Jacob what was needed to make a ship ready, and as he did so, they adjusted the set a bit more so that it was fully the ship.

There were a few scenes that were definitely meant to amuse the little children in the audience. They are giving Jeremy Jacob a tour, and naming all the part of the ship - including the poop deck. Jeremy Jacob is a little bemused and repeats the name of it. The ever helpful Swill reports that the poop deck is the rearmost part of the ship, directly above the captain's cabin.
This lead to the cast chanting "poopy poop, poopy poop." Much to the amusement of the small children. After a bit, Braid Beard asked if everyone had gotten that out of their system, which set Sharktooth off again. I don't think that most of the kids understood why that was funny, but a lot of the adults did.

The adults in the cast were all very good, but the stand outs were definitely the kids.

Jeremy Jacob, (Once again, played by Austin Zdziarski) had a fantastic voice, very impressive for a sixth grader. He had a big part too, and once the show picked up steam, he did it fantastically. He had a slightly shaky start when he was alone on the stage at the beginning, but it's hard to act alone. But he did a great job looking impressed, confused, and frustrated by the pirates, depending on the point in the show.

Andrew Oppmann played Land Ho. Whenever the captain would call for him, all of the others would turn and face out, shouting, "Where?" Braid Beard would sigh and say: "Land Ho the pirate." Except for the one time when he said "Land Ho!" meaning he had spotted land, and Land Ho the pirate responded, "yes sir?" He looked so disappointed when he found out that he wasn't being called.

Ashley Patin played Steve. I loved it - we have all the pirates with good pirate-y names, and then Steve. "Just one word, like Madonna" She was very funny to watch in the background, especially when she was fighting with Jeremy Jacob's soccer ball.

But, the stand out among the standing out people was Swill, played by Teddy Warren. He's been in a lot of other shows, and I am pretty confident that this is not the last I have seen of him. Swill was the "smart" one in the group, or as I thought of him, the nerdy one of the group. He also got yelled at a lot, and he had this great expression when he got yelled at. He'd kind of pull his hat down over his ears. At several different times during the show, he would helpfully inform people what things were in a reciting tone of voice.

There was a song about finding a place to bury the treasure, and Jeremy Jacob attempts to tell them that he made a map, and he'll lead the way, but Braid Beard insists that he can read it. This led to a very silly scene... Braid Beard, Land Ho, Steve and "Max" were dancing around the stage, as Braid Beard came up with many different interpretations of the map. It started out with two steps to the left ("your other left, Steve") and then ten baby steps forward, and then moonwalk two steps back, and then do the wave. It pretty much went downhill from there... but it was very funny with all of the different dance steps that Braid Beard called out.
Swill would periodically interrupt, and launch into this song with a lot of big words very quickly. I wish that I could have understood it better, because it was impressive. And he did a silly dance.
The other four, by this point, are running around all over the audience, while a frustrated Swill and Jeremy Jacob are trying to get their attention. It was funny at first, but I think that this scene dragged on for far too long.

Finally, though, they arrived at Jeremy Jacob's house to bury the treasure. Braid Beard brought out a huge chest, filled with gold and jewels and then took out a very tiny chest and gave it to Jeremy Jacob. Apparently this was the most important treasure that they had. Jeremy Jacob had decided that he missed his family, but he would also miss the pirates. They assured him that they would always be around - he just had to raise the flag that they gave him and they would come back. But, for a faster way to get in touch with them, he could find them online at Pirates dot ARGH. ("That's pirates dot argh, all lower case" says Swill).

Apparently, they had been selling raffle tickets for some sort of autographed baseball stuff, and they were going to do the drawing at the end of the show. There were four prizes, and four kids in the cast, so each one of them drew a name. Once again, Swill demonstrated that he really is a performer, by organizing a drumroll team for each of the drawings. As always, none of the people who won were in the audience at the time. I've sat through these drawings at least three times, and never has anyone in the audience at the time won.
After the drawing, they got settled into place for the talk back, where Swill and Steve fought over his hat. (He got it back, but really... he had given it to her in the first place to hold, so I dunno what he expected)

There wasn't too much of a plot to this play, besides Jeremy Jacob spending the day with some pirates, but it was a lot of fun to watch.