Camden Fringe Review: Asian Pirate Musical, Upstairs at the Gatehouse ★★★½

Asian Pirate Musical: Real History, Imagined Futures, One Storm-Tossed Crew

Asian Pirate Musical arrives as a full production only after seven years of deliberate groundwork, a sold-out work-in-progress at the Vaults in 2020, a concert showing at the Pleasance in 2024 and a studio cast album along the way, and it’s all the stronger for this patience. Audience members around me who had followed the show since those early days were audibly delighted to see it arrive in this fully fledged form and I understood why.

The premise is a good one: a storm in 2049 throws a lone pirate together with seafarers plucked from across time, among them the real historical figures of the 14th century Muslim navigator Zheng He and the 19th century pirate queen Sek Yeong, alongside imagined 21st century climate survivors and 23rd century space revolutionaries. What holds this ragtag crew together, sensibly, is something all of them share regardless of era: the physical fact of the Straits of Melaka itself. It’s a nice bit of grounding for a plot that could otherwise have floated off into abstraction.

The set design (Scamp Niemz) has clearly been thought through. The sails do double duty, given an Asian nautical feel with bamboo strips hinting at a junk, while also functioning as a surface for the lighting to play across, which gave the production more range than its small upstairs space might suggest. Costumes (also Niemz) are excellent with each hinting at Asia, piracy and that character’s own era. The opening number earns its keep too, with the ensemble’s “hai!” giving the whole thing genuine pirate swagger from the off.

Characterisation is where the writing is strongest. Zheng He (Yñaqui Tuason-Inocian) reads as buttoned-up and formal to begin with, appropriately tied to his imperial station, before the show lets him loosen. Sek Yeong (Amanda Maud) is the gift of the evening, played with proper comic timing and just the right edge of scheming. Nazar (Ashley Goh) is pitched as distinctly modern against the historical figures around her, which works well, though I did want more clarity on her own story: how she came to be alone on the ship isn’t fully explained, and I found myself wanting to know more about the crew she’d lost and what kind of ship she’d lost them from. It’s a small gap in an otherwise well-drawn character.

Keliling (Rai Endah) and Riang (Nabilah Hamid), the show’s future-set space pirates, get one of the loveliest numbers in the score with their duet “No Space for Me”, which plays on the double meaning of space as both their home and room to grow within a relationship. It’s a good example of the lyric writing at its best: across the board, the words have a clarity and a deftness of vocabulary that a lot of new musicals don’t manage, and several two and three-part vocal medleys are worked in with real confidence.

One genuinely moving sequence has the crew pass an Indonesian town that has sunk within the world of the story, a quiet gut-punch of a moment that the production doesn’t overplay. I want to flag, with real appreciation, that the performance I saw had surtitles. It may be a small thing to mention but a show of this size doing it demonstrates a strong commitment to access that is worth applauding.

Sound design also deserves particular mention. Radio static, animal calls, storms, all of it worked, and I loved the touch of nautical sound effects carrying over into the arrival in space, placing us at sea before we even began.

By the interval, I found myself wanting a second big ensemble number, something with the same communal, all-hands-on-deck feeling of “Hai Onward”, built from the instrumental palette the show has developed so well by that point. Comedy is also where I’d like to see the next iteration push further. The audience around me came alive whenever the show allowed itself some light and shade, and when the imperial pirate Zheng He let loose in “Without You” it was a highlight precisely because it let the tone loosen up.

The ending needs a small amount of further thought. If the crew are meant to have become eco-pirates by the close, in a broken world that surely needs exactly that kind of stewardship, this wasn’t as clearly landed as it could have been.

None of that should overshadow what’s been achieved here. This is a show that has taken its time, listened to itself, and grown into something genuinely distinctive. It deserves a further life, and I think the changes above would only widen its strength and appeal rather than dilute it.

Asian Pirate Musical is written collectively, with book, music and lyrics by Zhui Ning Chang, Frey Kwa Hawking, Jade Leamcharaskul, Sarita Lewis, Nemo Martin and XANA.

Asian Pirate Musical plays Upstairs at the Gatehouse until 2 August 2026. Tickets are £16, running time is two hours including an interval, and there’s an age guidance of 12+. Worth noting for readers: Upstairs at the Gatehouse does not have step-free access, with 17 steps up to the Box Office level and a further three up to the auditorium.

[Thank you to Asian Pirate Musical for a gifted ticket for an honest review]

Photgraph credit: Mike Skelton

Read our interview with Zhui Ning Chang and Jade Leamcharaskul

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