Theatre
Post Dramatic Stress Disorder
St James Cavalier

Nothing beats the stressful run-up to Christmas, with its endless to-do lists, insane shopping and frayed tempers, better than a good dose of laughter, ideally at the expense of those very things which stress us out to begin with.

Frolic Theatre’s latest version of their sketch show, Post Dramatic Stress Disorder, this time goes for seasonal fun by ‘putting the X in Xmas’, and generally delivers. Accompanied with live keyboard music by Luca Zerafa, its 11 short pieces varied in quality but all managed to showcase the cast members’ abilities well. Five of the seven cast members actively wrote and directed sketches, occasionally directing each other’s.

The first piece, Competition of the Carol Singers (script and direction by Bettina Paris), saw professional carol singer Heidi in a bitchy sing-off with two competitors – Marta Vella as Heidi and Vikesh Godhwani and Sean Borg as the rival duo. Combining song and comedy, this sketch made a favourable first impression and set the tone for the show while highlighting the dynamic among the cast members as well as Mr Borg’s good singing voice.

Godhwani and Paris then took part in a sketch by Vella, Friends in the Audience, in which they played two friends of an actress who was playing the role of the villain in a Christmas panto. Their cutting remarks about what they really feel about their friend, the production, panto traditions and other members of the audience were wickedly true and resonated positively with the audience.

There were, of course, less entertaining pieces which elicited a few smiles and smirks perhaps, but did not work as well for me.

Vella’s Avant Garde Nativity Play, featuring all six of the acting cast members, was a touch too stretched to have a strong impact; while Godhwani’s The Pitch, where two producers (Sean Borg and Ryan Cutajar) attempt to convince a theatre impresario (Ema Marie Attard) to support their alternative, raunchy Christmas show, was well-paced and light-hearted but too literal.

The same can be said of Secret Santa (written and directed by Ema Attard and Bettina Paris), which poked fun at the inequalities that persist when giving gifts anonymously on a budget. I did, however, enjoy Paris’s Christmas Line Dance, featuring a bunch of grumpy but surprisingly-sprightly old men (Godhwani, Borg and Cutajar).

Paris and the other ladies came into their own in two terrific sketches – Stage Mums (written by Attard and directed by Godhwani) and Interpretive Dance (written by Vella and choreographed by Paris and Attard).

In the former, three very different but equally snobby and competitive mothers wait as their sons are at an audition. The conversation was hilariously Maltese and frighteningly accurate, with Vella, Paris and Attard sparring verbally and acting like the typical frenemies in a manner equally as bad as the teens they parent. In the latter sketch, which had me holding my sides with laughter, Vella plays a theatre academic giving a boring paper at a conference, enlisting the aid of two austere dancers to illustrate movement in two Christmas songs: the traditional Auld Lang Syne and Lady Gaga’s Christmas Tree. It was hands down the best sketch in the show and worth every minute of its too-short time slot.

Together with Stage Mums, Godhwani’s Christmas Casting Call confirmed Vella’s script-writing and directorial qualities.

Ryan Cutajar’s script for Il-Ħajja Maltija fuq it-Televixin was equally hilarious and once again served to focus the cast’s excellent dynamic and comic timing, which was also showcased in the saucy ending – the show promised in The Pitch – with Vella’s Putting the X in Xmas. This did its job as a larger cast piece, but I would definitely have ended the show on a high with Interpretive Dance.

Post Dramatic Stress Disorder’s Christmas show was a very good attempt at introducing up-and-coming talent to a wider audience beyond the theatre community, and while it needed a bit of polish around some of its edges, it was definitely an enjoyable and entertaining production and a good alternative to panto, if you’re more inclined to shorter bursts of sharp comedy.

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