One of the great things about the Fringe is the opportunity to see theatre in unusual places. Hidden in Thorndon, Glenbervie Terrace is a steep pathway leading off Tinakori Road. Chalked arrows on the pavement indicate there be pirates ahead – yar!

Arrive early for the show and take the opportunity to admire a large house built in the early 1900s, described by Wellington City Council as highly idiosyncratic. You will be ushered through a large lobby area into the waiting room where, if you are lucky, a tot of rum will be offered to prepare you for the ordeal.  Then step through an internal window into the "new" wing and follow the creaking staircase down to the port-holed performance space. You can almost feel the ghosts of colonial New Zealand despairing at the intrusion.

Wait, did I say ordeal? Well, director Stevie Wldewood declares this to be a play that not everyone will warm to, citing it as crass, violent, manipulative and tragic. The truth of the show is rather more prosaic. And rewarding. For all the dressing, this show stems from core human emotions of grief and jealousy. You don’t have to be a pirate, radical or otherwise, to find meaning in those.

The Piradicals are an activist group, a gloriously dysfunctional post-modern family. The cause that has brought together these misfits is not made explicit. What are you rebelling against – what have you got? Since the death of their leader Lancy (Dan Dubois, via DVD), the Piradicals have been crumbling. With his absence, the glue that held the group together in more ways than one has gone. There is a power vacuum at the highest level and among the expressions of grief, there is more than one character with the desire to take over. The politics are sexual as well as territorial – it’s going to get messy.

Dirty Di (Dayle Jones) is rough, tough and brusque. Menacing and authoritative, Di seems the obvious leader-elect. Conrad (Kent Seaman) is a mess of emotions, but also eyes the opportunity to move up the ladder. It’s this battle of the sexes that that drives the story.

In supporting roles, Max (Paul Waggott) mainly provides light relief and his presence in the group seems less secure. Lucille (Sophie Stone) is more enigmatic, while George (Tessa Moxey) is the openly vulnerable one, looking for nothing more than his or her own sense of identity.

It would have been nice to know more about what The Piradicals represented, to understand what their deeds were intended to achieve. As it is, this is relegated to background noise so the foreground power struggle can be played out.

Talking of background noise, a wonderfully dirty guitar riff provides a recurring theme. This became, for me, Lancy’s motif – just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you have to stop playing power games or manipulating your "family".

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