The present revival of Trevor Zahra’s Minn wara ż-Żipp, by Unifaun at Sir Temi Zammit Hall, was first performed six years ago and reviewed by me then at some length.
The current version does not differ greatly from the original text, the main important difference being the introduction of a number of clever lyrics, bawdy of course, sung by Maria Luana and played by a lively two-piece band. They are a useful addition to a text that flogs a single theme to death and has no overarching plot.
The piece is structured as a series of chapters, all of them dealing mostly in a very broadly comic and unrestrainedly verbal fashion with the male generative member.
The cast of three – Renato Dimech, Jean Pierre Busuttil and Joseph Galea – address the audience on a whole array of topics.
The comical and semi-farcical tone of the piece is suspended for a relatively short time with members of the cast portraying, none too deeply I should say, the emotional and social problems of gay men and of people with serious issues of sexual identity. The cast found this section slightly awkward and the audience response tended to be even more awkward.
I remember how well ‘Snits’ Spiteri depicted a suffering gay man in the 2008 production. I fear his replacement, Joseph Galea, who plays the comic scenes successfully, was not up to this character.
Chris Gatt’s skill brought out the best in the three actors
Perhaps, the most extraordinary episode, is the surreal one in which Zahra has his actors impersonate different male members, reflecting the various types of men to whom they belong. In this section Renato Dimech nearly brought the house down with his sanctimonious, ultra pious organ.
Busuttil’s comic personality is often characterised by his extra boldness, his projection of a supreme self-confidence.
He and Dimech are true comics. Their skill in transforming the very coarse material of what they say into something often acceptable to most, makes the two-act piece that should have been a 60-minute one-acter into something I could often digest.
Even they, together with Galea, however, found it impossible to make the section on the male member as a urinating organ truly funny. The scene showing young adolescents vying with each other about the distance they can pee (a scene borrowed, I think, from a once-famous French novel, Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevalier), and the attempts to show the different urinating styles of figures like Rambo or James Bond, were very weak – humour at its most juvenile.
It was sad for me to see a director of Chris Gatt’s calibre devote time to this work that is balanced awkwardly between theatre proper and stand-up comedy. But I have little doubt that it was his skill, honed over decades of theatre work that brought out the best in the three actors and he also provided the piece with its excellent lighting.