Circles of Hell and their lessons

Theatre
Id-Divina Commedia
St James Cavalier

When the lights dimmed on the gala performance of Id-Divina Commedia amid a thunderous applause, one could not help overhearing some of the distinct comments which escaped the lips of an awed audience.

Mario Micallef, the tried-and-tested mentor and main actor of Talenti, the theatrical company, had once again demonstrated his phenomenal memory and remarkable stage presence by sailing through Dante Alighieri’s epic, as adapted for the stage by that indefatigable translator Alfred Palma.

The first cantos of Dante’s opus were circulated piecemeal among his readers before they became a complete volume. Not unlike Dickens’s novels, Dante’s Commedia was a work in progress which readers followed in instalments. His epic was like an internet between poet and readers who watched the journey unfold. Dante wanted to catch his readers’ attention at the end of one canto so as to propel them into the next.

Mr Palma, who has to date translated no less than 10 Shakespearean texts in the vernacular for Talenti, has provided a commendable version which provided the right fodder for his interpreter. Sidestepping the intricate mathematical, hendecasyllabic and terza rima stanzas which formulate his excellent original translation, Mr Palma’s 75th-minute prose monologue, as spoken by the great poet himself, retains the poem’s imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife. Mr Palma has succeeded in giving his concise one-acter its own rhythm and impulse.

With all the poetics and other academic niceties aside, it must have also been easier in Dante’s life to score points with his account of the various famous and infamous historical personalities whom the poet encounters throughout his travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. And I wondered how a modern-day audience would react to characters like Venedico, the Italian politician accused of pimping, Griffolino of Arezzo the con-man, Cato, the righteous official, Pope Nicholas III and his association with simony and others of their ilk.

I was also curious as to how veteran actor Mr Micallef, and his director of old standing, Zep Camilleri, would attempt to inject the text with the theatrical spark that transforms a work from page to stage. I knew that the late film star Alberto Lupo, and award-winning comedian Roberto Benigni had recited the opus on CD; but this was “theatre”.

The play opened with black clad actresses cavorting in a 1960s-like chorus style, representing the beasts Dante meets, while astray in a wood, during Hell’s first canto. Then Dante enters on stage carrying a huge tome which he places on a waiting podium and proceeds with the narration. I became immediately aware that Mr Micallef was not employing his usual theatre voice, but a sort of mellifluous, honey-toned sounding voice that a lover would use to charm his lover, or a confessor, a penitent.

As the narration wore on and Dante, now led by Virgil, meandered in and out of the infernal Nine Circles describing the carnal sinners, the treacherous soothsayers, the fraudulent thieves and councillors, right down to the traitors cowering in the fourth ring of circle No. 9, I found myself listening in rapt attention.

This mesmerising feeling was retained through the great poet’s sojourn into purgatory and heaven with the actor never even seeming having to resort once to his high register. It became clear that this production by concentrating on the main actor’s ability to draw “speaking pictures” had succeeded in involving the hearts and minds of its audience, thus capturing the excitement that is tantamount to successful theatre.

In fact, the use of actors during brief interludes, to illustrate demons, angels, Virgil (a poet Dante admired who here acts as his guide) and Beatrice (Dante’s first and greatest love who here leads him to Heaven), while perhaps intending to give the piece a modicum taste of the mystery and miracle plays of the 15th century only served as a minor distraction.

In these days of controversial in-your-face theatre, it seems that the poetically-voiced live theatre in Maltese still has the energy to remain valid while transcending time.