All female cast and crew behind Cork play about Anne Bonny

An all-female cast and crew are presenting a fictionalised play about the real-life pirate, Anne Bonny, one of Kinsale’s most famous women.

Thought to be born in the late 1600s, Anne’s short-lived career during the golden age of piracy was nevertheless impactful, making this rebel woman infamous.

She is a source of fascination for playwright, Éidín Griffin, who has used time travel as a tool for her play, Captain Wagtail. Wagtail is a Cockney slang term for a woman of ‘loose morals’.

Whatever about her morals, Anne was a colourful character, and the fact that she is said to have been born on the Old Head of Kinsale piqued Éidín’s interest. Having lived in South Africa, working in schools and different communities, Éidín moved to Kinsale in 2019 to reinvent herself, living at one stage in a boat.

She studied permaculture at Kinsale College of Further Education. She recently completed a Masters in arts engagement. She now works as a craft gardener. But Éidín has always written and has done some acting.

She did “a bit of stand-up comedy” in her 20s. Captain Wagtail is her second play. It was a hit at the Fit-Up Festival last year.

“Kinsale has been amazing,” says Éidín, who is originally from Wicklow. “Because it has always been a port, I think it is very open to strangers who can sail in or walk in.”

Her dog, a Scottish terrier called MacDuff, “is a real character. Through him, I’ve got to know people. He gives me an opportunity to engage with people.”

Very little is known about Anne Bonny. Éidín, who is directing the play for the Cork Fringe, decided to “time slip Anne Bonny into 2026. This wild woman wakes up with a hangover under the desk of an academic. She’s usually good at holding her liquor, and she is good at finding places to stay.”

The desk belongs to Clemence McMurrough, “a middle-aged pompous and prudish academic. She is trying to research Anne Bonny, who is seen as a proto-feminist. Anne Bonny doesn’t know any feminist theory. The academic just thinks she has been interrupted by a filthy and smelly woman who just won’t leave her alone. I don’t want to give too much away. The two women figure some stuff out, and then weird stuff happens. It’s great craic.”

It’s thought that Anne Bonny was born after her servant mother’s affair with a married lawyer. When her mother got pregnant, she and the married man ran off together and ended up in the Caribbean. Later, Anne, whose mother died when she was quite young, moved with her father to South Carolina, where she married a sailor and small-time pirate called James Bonny. The currency at the time was sugar and slavery.

“It was a horrendous society. The pirates were the renegades who were living on the edges. There is very little written about Anne Bonny. She was running around with Captain Jack Rackham, an English pirate whom Johnny Depp was styled after in Pirates of the Caribbean. Anne Bonny got rid of her husband, who had turned informer for the Crown. She ended up with Captain Rackham, who became her lover. He and his crew ended up getting caught for their crimes and were hanged.

“Anne Bonny and another woman, Mary Read, are thought to have said they were pregnant and therefore couldn’t be hanged.”

Éidín says there was a question mark around the relationship between Mary Read, Anne Bonny and Captain Rackham. “The three of them were said to have been in a relationship. They were certainly not a nuclear family.”

In what is said to be the only quote known to have come from Anne Bonny, she berated Captain Rackham, saying: ‘If you had fought like a man, you would not have been hang’d like a dog.’

Anne Bonny did her damnedest with Mary Read to repel the Crown soldiers. 

“She definitely wasn’t one to back down. Mary Read ended up dying of a fever in jail. Anne Bonny disappeared. There are rumours of her living the high life at 80, but nobody actually knows.”

Anne Bonny would have known about Granualie, the pirate queen from the West of Ireland (1530-1603).

“She was way more powerful than Anne Bonny ever was (in her 61-day career).”

But that is not to take from Anne Bonny’s pioneering spirit. She disguised herself as a man a lot of the time.

Éidín, who is adventurous, like the subject of her play, learned how to sail in Kinsale, having never been on a boat before. “I met some amazing people, including an American woman with whom I ended up sailing to Scotland. She is in the Pacific now doing a round-the-world trip.”

Who gets to tell women’s stories?

“That is part of the conversation around this play. When do women actually get asked themselves what was going on? It’s really important to have women’s voices amplified. I’m not sure how Anne Bonny would feel about things these days, but it’s very entertaining to pretend she is around now.”

The play, which stars Sarah Kelly as Anne Bonny, and Karla Goodman as Clemence McMurrough, is described as a comedy drama. Éidín says that while we can’t judge the actions of a 17th-century woman by today’s standards, “especially those of such a notorious figure as Anne Bonny, we can ponder on just how far we have come...”

Captain Wagtail will be performed on May 9 and 10 at the Pavilion in Cork city at 3pm.

Tickets at www.corkfringe.com.