Theatre
All New People
Blue Box, M Space, Msida

There are times when one can feel so alone that their thoughts begin to weigh upon them so very badly that they consider the unthinkable: a flawed logic which pushes them to suicide. This is the state of mind Charlie finds himself in when he attempts to take his own life in a closed beach house on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Fortunately, while he’s trying to pluck up the courage to hang himself and end it all, ditzy estate agent Emma walks in and finds him standing on a chair.

Masquerade’s production of Zach Braff’s excellent play All New People at the Blue Box theatre in Msida introduced Charlie and Emma to a Maltese audience and it was love at first sight, once Emma persuaded him to take the noose off his neck.

With a stylish modern set designed by Aldo Moretti, director Anthony Bezzina’s stage was ready for a contemporary version of a house-gathering character study, unravelling on a cold bleak winter’s day. Bezzina’s meticulous attention to detail and casting choices could not have been better suited to Braff’s well-wrought and very funny script.

Indeed, for all its suicidal opening, the play develops into a witty, hilarious comedy featuring the aforementioned Charlie, played by a sharply-timed Malcolm Galea, Emma, portrayed by Jo Caruana in top form, Emma’s friend Myron; Tom Camilleri in an excellent debut role on the Maltese scene, and later joined by Maxine Aquilina’s Kim, as a rather airheaded but well-meaning escort sent by Charlie’s friend to entertain him on his birthday.

When Emma receives a visit from her best friend Myron, a fireman and local drug dealer, the two of them attempt to talk Charlie out of his suicidal state when Kim shows up unannounced and ready to give Charlie a good time – which Tom appreciates more than the birthday boy.

The four characters are strangers thrown together into an unusual situation and while Charlie is resistant to their well-intentioned intervention, their discussions lead to questions about why they all ended up living the lives they were living at that point in time in which they met. The technique used was to freeze the stage action while a flashback video link (filmed and edited by V-Squared) revealed each individual’s dark secret to the audience – with the participation of Marc Cabourdin, Isabelle Warrington and Steven Oliver.

Braff’s highly intelligent script uses comedy to make a point about the transcience of life

Thus, with further knowledge of the characters’ motivations, the audience had a greater insight into their reactions towards each other, their intentions and insecurities; until they finally admitted everything to each other towards to end of the play.

Galea’s morose Charlie counterbalanced Caruana’s overly enthusiastic and close to desperate Emma, who, thanks to a little pharmaceutical help from Myron, was getting increasingly earnest, helpful and incredibly talkative. These two carried the weight of the play at its onset and their dynamic did justice to the fast-paced rhythm of their lines. The same can be said for Camilleri and Aquilina, who joined them soon afterwards: Camilleri’s deep-voiced Myron was no-nonsense and philosophical, while maintaining just the right amount of lechery towards the promiscuous Kim, whose escorting was meant to finance her music career.

Interestingly, it is the most worldly and materialistic of the lot, Kim, to comment about the fact that the lot that we’re dealt with in life is something which we can overcome – that those who are creating obstacles for you or getting you down, will be gone one day and that in a century’s time ‘there will be all new people’.

Braff’s highly intelligent script uses comedy to make a point about the transience of life and suggests that we should make the most of it while we can; so that our complicated love lives, our guilt feelings and sense of responsibility to others are all part of what makes us incredibly complex and interesting humans.

Thanks to its strong cast and flawless pace, All New People is a great play to watch and bears the mark of the high quality productions which we have come to expect of Masquerade.

• All New People is being staged again at Blue Box, Msida on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8pm.