Brighton Year-Round 2025
The Pirate’s Tavern
Frankie Heartless
Genre: Music, Musical Theatre
Venue: Sweet Venues at The Yellow Book
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Sea shanties. Folk songs. Audience participation in a high octane tavern vibe, tankards clash and an hour of skilful and charismatic join-in music and piratical banter ensues.
Review
Frankie Heartless is a UK-based musician and performer appearing regularly at events spanning steampunk, cabaret, music hall, folk, and metal. Their work often features sea shanties, live violin, and drag king performance. Frankie has performed solo and as a member of bands including The Filthy Spectacula, Thw@ck, and Jemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something. Known for combining traditional music with theatrical elements, they appear at both themed events and music venues, bringing together a range of styles rooted in live performance.
Our pirate host is humorous, raucous, and warmly welcoming – skilled at striking just the right balance between immersive costume and engaging banter. We’re made to feel like guests aboard a pirate ship, swept up in song, story, and the sway of a sea-faring night. The audience lapped it up, especially when joining in with the many rousing choruses.
An octave mandolin brings depth and drive in the intimate venue, while Tuttle’s Reel is ably delivered on the violin, supported by a finger-clicking, foot-tapping crowd.
There are sea shanties aplenty – from Drunken Sailor to Haul Away Joe – and all are buoyed by bathetic banter, snippets of song history, and tales of the sea.
The performance veers joyfully from raunchy and raucous to the liltingly lovely – and yes, there’s even a sea shanty about lesbians.
Frankie Heartless commands the stage. The repartee is relaxed and inclusive – never designed to unsettle – and our pirate is cheeky, endearing, and a generous evening host. While the pirate theme occasionally gives way to a broader musical panorama of life lived on, near, or because of the sea, it never strays too far from its salt-soaked moorings.
That said, I did find myself wanting just a touch more piratish energy – more swashbuckle, perhaps. But what is here is strong: a highly capable violinist, the heartful Heartless steers a course through folk songs that mostly remain anchored in maritime themes, with the odd foray inland.
The Yellow Book venue is a small, intimate space, where no audience member is ever far from the action. Songs smash against the back wall like angry waves against rocky cliffs – a theatrical flourish that suits both the material and the musician.
I thoroughly enjoyed this hour in the company of Frankie Heartless and would happily go again. The audience wanted more. I wanted more. What more could you ask for than that?
And by the way – I love a stompy one too.
