ENTERTAINING THOUGHTS

I just know I'm going to annoy plenty of people, many of whom are probably going to call me a lick-spittle lackey of the regime or something like that, but that hasn't worried me for the Heaven-knows how many years I've written the Beck column, so it isn't going to worry me know.

Incidentally, because I probably can be accused of ignoring the elephant in the room, I do know that there is a significantly raucous controversy raging in the general direction of Daphne Caruana Galizia but I'm ignoring it. Not because I don't have opinions, but because I have several compelling reasons for not expressing them in this, or any other, public forum.

Getting back to annoying people by being a lick-spittle what's it's face, I was a tad perplexed to see how a whole skew-load of artistes and performing arts folks took it upon themselves to make a big noise about the Opera House Project.

Not that they don't have as much right as anyone else to make a big noise, of course: everyone and his brother and her sister has one (an opinion, I mean) and with the proliferation of the blogosphere and its infestation by the commentariat, we're getting the benefit of being told this opinion all day, every day. Never mind that the manner in which the opinion is couched, or for that matter that the opinion itself, renders it not worth a bucket of warm spit, the megaphones go into overdrive as soon as a vague idea manifests itself in what passes for a consciousness in some people.

Why was I perplexed, I imagine you asking, always assuming you're still even remotely interested. Well, it's like this, aforementioned artistes seem to have got together, figuratively speaking, to stamp their collective feet, again, about how the theatre that will replace the ruin at City Gate won't have a roof.

To be precise, and I probably used the wrong word myself, it's not going to be a theatre, precisely, but a performance space, and it's going to be outdoors. The fact that it's been perfectly clear from quite some time ago that this was going to be the case doesn't seem to have dawned on the foot-stampers, as hasn't the fact that the space doesn't lend itself to an acceptable modern theatre, for all the whinging about how the old Opera House should be put back as it was.

Valletta has quite a number of indoor performance spaces, ranging from the Manoel Theatre at the smart end, through the MCC at the more utilitarian point on the spectrum ending up with St James and the MITP, the latter being where the more experimental stuff is put on.

And do you know what the problem with all these places is, really? Apart from the fact that some of them could do with a face-lift and a half, to put it mildly, that is?

Call me crass and mercenary if you like - to be honest, if that's all I'm called, I'll consider myself to have got away with it - but something most of these venues has in common is that on many occasions, they're not full. I've been to the Manoel on Tuesdays, when artist(e)s of repute and skill were playing, and there have been row upon row of empty seats.

I trust you're getting my drift: yet another indoor theatre, especially one on such a small site, is not precisely what the capital needs. I'm not saying that the existing spaces shouldn't be improved, not least of which is the MCC's main hall, which could do with a whole series of experts' eyes being cast over it with a view to making it a venue fit for the likes of Joseph Calleja but do we really need another indoor theatre?

Outdoor venues exist in countries where there is noise and where the weather is not ideal but apparently, we're special here, we can't have a decent outdoor theatre (there, that word again) because it has been taken into the minds of a group of people that they know best and there's an end to it.

It all makes me think my missus was right all along: they should have just cleaned up the ruin and turned it into a memorial to the war dead.