This Mia is no Madonna

For many Christians, Oliver Lansley’s Immaculate (Theatre Anon at St James Cavalier) will appear to be an outrageous telling of Christ’s second coming set in our own times.

Outrageous because of its presenting as the modern Mother of God a woman, Mia, who is a part-time purveyor of sex and because of the comical manner in which the whole situation is presented.

The work is intended above all to entertain, and dealing light-heartedly with matters seen as sacred by many even in a world that has become largely post-Christian has become good box-office stuff for people of the theatre.

This notwithstanding, I feel it should not be considered to be quite unacceptable. However hilariously, it does present vividly the way in which younger Christians question their religious beliefs and find the ways of God more inscrutable than their parents and forefathers did.

Mia (Charlotte Grech) has not had sex, she says, for at least nine months since she and her boyfriend Michael (Stefan Cachia Zammit) broke up, and is very puzzled when she finds she is pregnant.

When, however, the Archangel Gabriel (Paul Portelli) tells her she has been impregnated by divine power so as to bring forth Christ in his second coming, she is flabbergasted and very indignant, telling Gabriel that though she earns a good income by providing sado-masochistic sex it is never of the penetrative kind.

When Michael and Mia have got round to accepting it, however, a great difficulty arises for Lucifer comes in to tell them Mia’s impregnation, far from being divine, was caused by Lucifer through the use of a human body he temporarily possessed six months before.

When he mentions the name of the man he possessed, Mia is shocked, this being Gary Goodman, a despised but good-natured ignoramus of a classmate who always fancied her.

Mia and the trio meet Goodman accidentally and eventually it transpires that as Lucifer had said on an occasion when both Goodman and Mia had too much to drink they probably had sex.

Gabriel soon recovers from his surprise but mutters wisely about God’s moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform, but then he counsels Gary, whom everyone views with horror, that he should not claim paternity of the unborn child.

On the other hand he should feel free to announce to one and all the miraculous birth of a child begotten through him which is about to happen, and this he does.

In an amusing scene, we hear the media announce in a multitude of languages, including Maltese, the remarkable events that are happening. I shall not disclose the way in which Lansley ends the play.

The play is in two acts that move swiftly, aided by Polly March’s finely paced direction, and performed by a strong cast headed by Charlotte Grech’s dominant Mia, a woman who has lived freely and is determined to control her destiny even if God, whom she addresses at one point in a long speech she delivers furiously but lucidly, has decided without warning to use her as his instrument.

Indeed her performance makes the audience believe that one of the play’s main themes is that women are their own mistresses.

The only thing she refuses to do is to abort the unborn child, even though some people believe it is their right to do so. Surely, this is one of the most striking performances I have ever seen from Grech.

Much of the play’s amusement derives from the ding dong battle between Portelli’s laid-back Gabriel and Alan Paris’s smoothly camp Lucifer.

Though he insists on his title as ‘Archangel’, this Gabriel is not in the least angelic in appearance with his little trilby and dull contemporary man’s clothing and without even rudimentary wings. This is fairly standard Portelli performance, making a virtue out of being ordinary in speech and gesture and, save for the very occasional wince, not greatly offended by the proliferation of the f*** word in Mia’s speech.

He tunes very fast for an archangel into the cause of Mia’s indignation, and when alone for a minute is brave enough to remind the boss that the people of today differ much from those of over a thousand years ago.

Paris’s Lucifer is not diabolical either. In one of the script’s most comical speeches, a monologue, he reveals to the audience his sense of the great injustice done to him by considering him as evil, and he is still most indignant at having been expelled from Heaven, where he was so greatly at ease, and denied a comfortable normal existence such as having shepherds like the Christmas ones in attendance.

He is, of course, mischievous, and delights in the successful ruse of using Goodman to impregnate Mia. His is probably the smoothest performance in the production; he produces laughs seemingly without effort.

Stefan Cachia Zammit starts off with an overdone scene of nervous anger, and soon settles down to a performance of more, but never excessive, restraint.

His long, astonished silence upon hearing what Gabriel and Mia have just told him about the Second Coming is beautifully timed, and indeed successful timing is characteristic of much of his performance.

Alan Montanaro’s Goodman has only two scenes but he makes much of this portrait of a good-humoured, good-natured but singularly ungifted man who unluckily gets on everyone’s nerves.

Like Joseph in the Bible story, who is often slightly comical in medieval religious drama, he wears his lack of dignity with a difference, and does an important job in preparing the way for the unborn child.

Denise Mulholland as Rebecca, Mia’s bosom friend, captures the audience in her long speech delivered at great speed but always with clarity as she explains in honest embarrassment how she has become her friend’s successor in Michael’s affection. A fine tour de force.

One word about the chorus of masked persons speaking in rhyming couplets. It was certainly unneeded but it adds to the fun. Immaculate runs at St James Cavalier, Valletta, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.