A return to tradition

It is impossible to resist the charms of a well-crafted Christmas panto, and following last year’s success, MADC’s The Princess and the Pea (MFCC, Ta’ Qali) had a lot to live up to.

Montanaro’s Dame achieves hyperbolic heights- Peter Farrugia

Family entertainment can be tricky at the best of times but director Nanette Brimmer brought warmth and good humour to this tongue-in-cheek story of aristocratic sensitivity.

Nathan Brimmer and Maxine Calleja-Urry’s script tells the familiar tale of a king’s plan to find his son a suitable wife, using a pea hidden under layers of mattresses as a test for royal delicacy.

The scheme is variously thwarted by the king’s malevolent brother, but help is at hand in the form of the princess’s grandmother (who is none other than her fairy godmother in disguise).

Peter Howitt’s set is all shades of Dulac and Rackham and the music includes popular songs by Queen and Abba, immediate crowd pleasers, with a few funny pastiches of Broadway musical numbers.

Prince Percy (Alex Gatesy Lewis) and Penny (Bettina Paris), a princess-turned-shop girl, both gave it a good shot, yet there never came a point where either stole the show. Paris’s Princess, for all her virtue, managed to come across a little too smug and irksome – she is at her best when she is singing, and the Prince and Princess’ duet (cleverly realised by splitting the stage) was a particularly memorable scene.

Likewise Gatesy Lewis, whose interpretation is otherwise solid, never transforms himself into the stalwart shining knight the story requires. Because they sit at the centre of the story, and that centre was ever so slightly off-kilter, something rather special happened – the focus shifted almost entirely onto more peripheral characters who would normally give colour to the performance.

Katherine Brown as Grandmother/Fairy Patience and Joseph Zammit, as Harry the chamberlain, enlivened the stage every time they appeared. Zammit, a talented comedic actor, was especially welcome and managed to pick up the pace with characteristic self-assurance and good timing.

Katherine Brown’s Chicago-inspired, “When you’re good to Grandma” was performed with gusto – if the dancing had matched her voice in exuberance, it would have been the show stopper it deserved to be.

King Philander (Ralph Mangion) bumbled with the best of them, and his scheming brother Baddafi, played by Joe Depasquale, had outfits and make-up to rival the Dame and an evil laugh that resounded throughout the theatre.

Andre Agius and Marta Vella were successful as the baddie’s sidekicks Moussa and Koussa, with Vella’s over-the-top routine perfectly suited to the performance. By the end of the show they’d overcome Baddafi’s wickedness and proved themselves worthy of a place in the pantomime pantheon of redeemed sidekicks.

Alan Montanaro’s Dame was naturally the lynchpin that held the piece together. His turn in a Katy Perry “Firework” sequence was one of the best bits, with Montanaro proving himself an objectively entertaining drag performer.

When Montanaro is most magnetic, he capitalises on the Dame’s unbridled licence to parody anything and everyone through her socially subversive behaviour.

What is unique to the MADC experience is primarily Montanaro’s presentation, and MADC’s innovative ability to reconstruct authentically Maltese social references.

Montanaro’s Dame achieves hyperbolic heights, illuminating that special unnaturalness of identity, the outrageous theatricality, which other Dames seem unwilling (or unable) to explore.

His performance shone when he worked on the element of surprise, and that’s why the almost forced references to politics and politicians fell a little flat.

They might be conventional and raise a giggle and the show needs to appeal to a broad audience, but by exploring local memes, MADC takes panto cheesiness and gives it new life.

The act becomes suitable to a culture that isn’t endlessly interested in party politics, and is capable of assimilating references and associations within the broader context of online networking and international media.

Examples include the Princess’s reference to Miss Malta’s infamous “Birds! It’s the only thing we have that flies” comment, the Dame quoting (an almost self-parodying) Clinton Paul music video, “I think a freak lives here”, and an homage to the ridiculous Treacy hat that Princess Beatrix wore to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding last April.

This year’s offering wasn’t the musical extravaganza MADC presented in 2010, and nor should it have been. It was a return to a more traditional interpretation that included all the madcap fun audiences have come to expect, and enjoy.

With work already under way on next year’s pantomime, MADC seems set to continue playing with the genre and creating the kind of Christmas panto that has found a treasured place in the holidays of so many Maltese households.