The recent revival at Pjazza Teatru Rjal of Porn: the Musical (book by Malcolm Galea, lyrics by Galea, Boris Cezek and Kris Spiteri, music by Spiteri and Cezek) goes back, with a few changes, to the original 2009 version.
It puts aside the shorter one-act version performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is amusing as ever with its plot about the young Maltese Stefan Bugeja who gets accidentally cast into a porn movie in New York.
Stefan falls in love with the female star, Sandy, and later saves the movie from disaster by inviting its director, Martin Scoresleaze, to continue filming it in Malta.
While filming, once again through a stroke of luck, Stefan the Bulge (the protagonist’s name as a porn actor) helps the film become an instant porn classic.
Galea's direction is characterised by the minimalism that made the production so attractive originally.
However, now he has wisely added a number of giant projections that give the production the more visually arresting dimension it needed in this large venue.
He emphasises the absurdity of the porn movie industry in which the only immorality lies in infecting other performers with sexually transmitted diseases. He also highlights the industry's abysmal cultural pretensions by making one of the performers, Johnny Long, achieve distinction because of his extraordinary sexual endowment.
He pokes fun at the tendency of the Maltese to greatly overrate our global importance, especially in the number where Scoresleaze and his cast puzzle over Malta's geographical location when planning to go there.
One of the best numbers, Everyone in Malta is related, again emphasises Malta's tininess, while our readiness to accept moral compromises is presented comically.
This is especially true when Stefan's seemingly conservative mother throws her Catholic morality to the winds when faced with a celebrity with the sexual endowments of Johnny Long (David Ellul) .
The show's six-person cast includes two women, Sandy (Sarah Naudi) whose free-living style does not prevent her from falling seriously in love, and Jade (Eliza Borg Rizzo) the happy-go-lucky girl whom Stefan ditches when he goes to New York, and tries foolishly to marry when he first comes back to Malta.
In this version, Jade is extremely nasty to Stefan, promising him a relationship of utter subservience to her, a future he wisely refuses to commit to.
Naudi and Borg Rizzo have one thing in common: their looks and their long, shapely legs. But the former is as pleasant as the latter is unpleasant.
The show's minimalism is complemented by Galea's using of doubling in the cast.
Louis Cassar, who oozes confidence at times, also doubles hilariously as Stefan's mother.
However, the show is most famous for its Miscellaneous Man (a richly comical Toni Attard) who plays a good number of bit parts and is outstandingly good in a scene where he alternates dizzily between being an office boy and a fearsome executive.
The music is good and is well played by Spiteri's band. Max Dingli, whose Stefan is always watchable – a comic character who is entirely Maltese – is a fine singer who can sing falsetto as effectively as he can belt the music out.
Finally, Cassar's sonorous voice and Naudi's elegantly projected singing are also outstanding.