Musical pirate tale mixes action, romance
Billed as family entertainment, musical will travel to Fla. venues
BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

The magical phrase “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you” is a familiar one for Long Branch native Michael Attardi.

“I am a huge fan of Walt Disney,” Attardi said just three days before his first original musical play premiered. “[Disney] would take a story and make it come alive through his characters.

“I want that to happen in my show.”

Attardi’s musical, “Twin Treasures: In Search of the Pirate Coin,” opened April 1 at the Strand Theater in Lakewood and will run through April 9.

PHOTOSBY MIGUEL JUAREZ staff A pirate’s hat is just one of the chapeaux Michael Attardi is juggling in his multiple roles as author, composer, producer and actor in “Twin Treasures: In Search of the Pirate Coin,” a new musical being presented at the historic Stand Theater in Lakewood.

The historic theater is the first of five venues that will host the show, which will tour August through September at venues in Orlando, Tampa, Miami and Jacksonville.

“Twin Treasures” is set in the 1850s on the sailing ships of three pirate brothers, who are roaming the seas in search of their father’s hidden treasure.

Each brother has a piece of a magical coin that was split in thirds. When put back together, the coin will show the brothers where the treasure is hidden.

A classic tale of good vs. evil is told when Captain Stubs, one of the brothers, becomes greedy and decides to steal the two pieces of the coin from his brothers, Castaway Kelly and Captain Cally, and find the treasure himself.

Captain Stubs’ plan backfires, leaving one of his brothers stranded on a desert island and the other brother roaming the seas on his pirate ship searching for him.

A twist in the story arises when Captain Stubs’ plan results in an explosion that separates the twin daughters of one of the ship’s captains.

One twin, Bonny, ends up on the deserted island with Castaway Kelly, and the other twin, Fanny, winds up on the pirate ship with Captain Cally.

Captain Stubs, who doesn’t know the whereabouts of his brothers, spends the next 16 years in search of them and the other two pieces of the coin. Meanwhile, his brothers remain separated and spend the years raising the twins.

Attardi’s play is an action adventure with a love story along the way that, like most fairy tales, ends with a twist that most people will not see coming, he said.

“I like to write like Walt Disney did,” he said. “There are a lot of lessons that can be learned throughout the play and people will leave happy.”

But this fairy tale did not just come together overnight.

In September 1998, Attardi was standing in line waiting to board the Snow White ride at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He turned to his wife and said, “This is how it all started. [Snow White] was the first movie [Walt Disney] made that defined who he was. I have ideas and I am going to start writing them down.”

For three years, Attardi wrote down his ideas.

The script for “Twin Treasures” was one of those and he wrote the screenplay in just two weeks.

Composing the music took another six months, arranging the music, an additional seven months, but the longest part, according to Attardi, was the five years it took to raise the financing for the $130,000 production.

Before writing “Twin Treasures,” Attardi had completed two musical animations, “Once Upon a Time” and “Zandorra,” but he said he has not been able to find funding for the screenplays yet.

When he looked back at the screenplays he had written, “Twin Treasures” stood out as his best family-oriented show that would appeal to both children and adult audiences, he explained.

“[Twin Treasures] has a ‘Shrek’ kind of humor that goes over kids’ heads, but adults get it,” he said. “When I was growing up, there was nothing like this, but today family entertainment has taken a great turn.”

Attardi wrote “Twin Treasures” as an animated film, but said an animated version would have cost between $15 million-$18 million, so he decided to turn it into a musical.

He wrote the script, composed the music and is producing the play.

“There is no sense of family values in society today,” he said. “I am bringing back family entertainment.

“I am not inventing the wheel, I am just putting different spokes on it.”

Today, Attardi, 38, resides in Middletown with his wife and 2-year- old son, and says the play is a dream come true.

According to Attardi, his interest in theater came out of his effort to overcome an obstacle.

Attardi’s childhood was dominated by a speech impediment that doctors said was not a physical or mental disorder, just a result of his thoughts outpacing his words.

He became involved in theater during his freshman year in high school in order to challenge himself and found that he could communicate fluently in front of a crowd.

To date, he has acted in 24 shows and directed two shows.

But in 1990, Attardi put theater on the back burner and chose sports over the arts when he signed with the Los Angeles Raiders for three years. He retired in 1993 after he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.

Attardi beat cancer and has since dedicated his time to writing children’s animation stories, but has not completely dismissed his love for sports.

In 1995, Attardi started Jersey Sports News, a sports paper that covers Monmouth County high school sports.

He sees “Twin Treasures” as a way to give back to the community for all that it has given him.

“This is something I can share,” he said. “It is my imagination.”