Staġjun Teatru Malti's commissioning of a dramatisation in Maltese of Nicholas Monsarrat's celebrated The Kappillan of Malta ties in beautifully with Mario Philip Azzopardi's policy of bringing audiences in their droves to the theatre.

Il-Kappillan ta' Malta, translated by Immanuel Mifsud and staged at Fort St Elmo, captures much of the heart of Monsarrat's novel. It gives a picture of a community trying to survive the great dangers and deprivations brought to Malta by World War II that is grander and more complex than, say, the one given by Ġuże Chetcuti in his Il-Kerrejja.

What Mifsud's play, faithful in a number of ways to the novel, has is Dun Salv, the parish priest who has lost his parish church and taken over the care of this community. His parents are a British naval officer and a Maltese noblewoman very much on her dignity, but he has put all social privilege aside and devoted himself to helping his parishioners.

He is, in many ways, a good priest but he has what was considered a serious flaw, back then – he sometimes ignores the authority of the bishop. His enemy is a monsignor, Scholti by name, who is always deploring Dun Salv's readiness to overlook his parishioners' moral irregularities and daily use of the catacombs for saying Mass. When Dun Salv conducts a somewhat chaotic marriage ceremony in the catacombs in Scholti's presence, the bishop runs out of patience. He deprives Dun Salv of his parish and exiles him indefinitely to Gozo.

Two tiers of balconies are turned into shelters on stage

Adrian Mamo has provided a large set, consisting mainly of two blocks with tiers of balconies representing the catacombs (although in truth they look nothing like the Maltese catacombs I know).

Save for the catacomb scenes, props are down to a minimum. The tiers of balconies make it possible for the director, Peter Busuttil, to create an ever-changing picture, with interventions by the parishioners.

These scenes in the catacombs see Mifsud's dialogue at its most inventive and Busuttil's direction at its liveliest and most dynamic. They provide a gallery of portraits, some of them somewhat gross cari-catures. Most notable is the couple that is constantly having intercourse in full view of the others, thus providing ironic amusement.

The uttering of gross double entendres or straightforward coarse language is frequent in some scenes; excessive, to my mind, but certainly not to that of many other audience members.

Dramatically, however, this serves to make it clearer why Scholti and the bishop disapprove so strongly of Dun Salv's tolerance for this behaviour, which he regards as reprehensible in people facing the possibility of death every day.

Pino Scicluna's Dun Salv is tall, and certainly not overweight, as against the short and stocky man (a fairly typical Maltese male figure) Monsarrat describes. But he has the charisma and eloquence clearly intended by the novelist. It is easy to see why his parishioners love this man.

On the other hand, Scicluna errs in making the priest gesticulate so much.

Dun Salv is a strong character, but his spirit of insubordination has to yield when he finds himself disciplined by the authoritarian Bishop (Mario Micallef), seconded by the odious Scholti (Anthony Ellul). He rebels only after weeks of Gozitan exile, though the script does not follow Monsarrat, who describes the priest as losing his faith.

What he does, however, is succumb to sex with a young Gozitan woman (Marvic Cordina) after she has made him drink too much wine. Busuttil lets us view this act performed briefly but with violent passion right downstage.

He manages to get back surreptitiously to Malta, where he finds that Scholti made everyone – except a lonely woman made insane by the death of her child – to leave the catacombs.

The last scene comes abruptly. Mifsud uses it to record the day of Dun Salv's funeral years later. Dun Salv’s faithful former lieutenant, Negro (a strong performance by Simon Curmi), tells a journalist that the priest spent all his remaining years in Gozo, where his notably significant life of service prompts the people there to give him a great man's funeral.

The play's setting in the war is emphasised again and again with the many huge bomb explosions provided by sound effects, but also, more interestingly by the unpleasant clashes between anglophiles and italophiles.

Dun Salv's brother-in-law Lewis De Brincat is a great lover of Italian culture but not dangerous in any way. Still, he finds himself arrested and kept in custody. We do not get to know if he gets deported to Uganda with Enrico Mizzi and others.

Vassallo provides a tall, elegant figure and plays De Brincat as an angry man who cannot be gentle even with his own children. The script does not provide him with many opportunities to display his deep italianisation.

Monica Attard makes a great stage comeback with her Barun-essa, aristocratic and firmly insistent on things remaining as they are even during war. The scene in which she gives advice to her granddaughter Maria Celeste (Tina Rizzo) about pre-marriage sexual relations with the young Fleet Air Arm pilot (Thomas Camilleri) shows this fine actress at her subtle best.

John Suda dominates many of the catacomb scenes with his portrait of Duminku, a black mar-keteer but a leader at grass roots level. His relationship with Mary Rose Mallia's Marie, foul-mouthed and lecherous, provides a number of comic moments.

Karen Magro manages to make the smallish part of Giovanna, Dun Salv's married sister, a watchable one. When, at a critical moment, she voices her distrust of Catholic teaching on marriage, she hits the audience hard.

Busuttil has not been finicky about accents, particularly Gozitan ones. This was especially noticeable in the accent used by Madalena, Dun Salv's one and only lover.

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