Willamette Week: Avast!

Show me someone who doesn't enjoy the lusty lore of the sea, and I'll show you a miserable whelp of a human being whose native instincts for romance, devilment and swordplay have been dulled by television and sugary breakfast cereal. Who can resist the allure of high-seas buccaneering! the toothsome maidens of port! salt air! steel clashing against steel! rum! sodomy! the lash! talking parrots! peg-legged despots! the windy snap of the Jolly Roger! knife-tossing! the grim prophecy of the Black Spot! sun-basking mermaids! the bawdy songs of a portside cabaret! and TREASURE, most of all TREASURE!?

Kitty Diggins, at least, is not immune. "Everyone loves pirates," says the Portland nightlife impresaria, the power lurking behind many an evening of go-go dancing, dancehall stepping, cabaret performance and bygone entertainments. Diggins' latest exploit, the lightly titled Frolic by the Sea, promises a seaside menagerie of mermaids, pirates, bathing beauties, blade-chuckers and burlesque dames. If all goes well, the Frolic should revive a kind of docklands revelry not seen in Old Town since they moved the Port north.

Diggins says she drew inspiration for the Frolic from a number of sources, including the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade in New York, a lifelong love of sea songs and a mermaid-in-a-bowl act featured back in the day at a long-gone Greek restaurant.

Thus, the Frolic will feature a diverse array of diversions:

Diggins will ringlead a Mermaid Revue. This spectacle will no doubt ruin the minds of many of the "sexy sailors" Diggins expects to be on hand.

A pair of sideshow vets with the explosive name Molotov and Felicity will display knife-throwing and sword-swallowing talents.

The San Francisco burlesque music troupe Cantankerous Lollies perform, allegedly for the last time on the Left Coast. These high-kicking, can-canning vaudevillians were recently named "Most Outstanding Group" at the Miss Exotic World Pageant.

The saucy, old-time saloon piano stylings of S.F.'s Suzanne Ramsey and singer-performer Dame Darcey will add to the night's soundtrack. With audience members encouraged (and offered a generous financial consideration) to dress as "pirates, mermaids, sailors or old-fashioned bathing beauties," a tasty evening no doubt awaits. Zach Dundas

The Frolic by the Sea unfolds at Dante's, 1 SW 3rd Ave., 226-6630. 10:30 pm Saturday, Aug. 11. $8, $5 for those dressed as pirates, mermaids, sailors or old-fashioned bathing beauties.

(originally published in the Willamette Week, August 08, 2001)