Jean Marc Cafà in Il-Marid Immaġinarju.

What drew Simone Spiteri and her Dù Theatre to decide on a production in Maltese of Moliere’s pitiless satire on the medical profession, Il-Marid Immaġinarju (which was put up at City Theatre, Valletta)?

Not to mention Chris Gatt, one of our best stage directors, to decide to give the production a modern setting, when medicine and the production of medicines in the 21st century have reached peaks of efficiency and both physicians and surgeons are by and large so much trusted?

It is now a far cry indeed from the late 17th century when Molière wrote and acted in his play. The lively Maltese version by George Cassola does not try to bring in the weaknesses and the occasional frauds of contemporary medical science.

There is just one attempt in the last act where Beralde, brother of the hypochondriac Argan, key figure of the play, is given perhaps a paragraph of pure Cassola, which voices many modern people’s puzzlement at the way in which medical opinion can change so radically regarding the benefits or harms of types of food and drink or of medicines.

This is one of Moliere’s longer plays and it includes musical and dance interludes, for which the outstanding composer Charpentier composed the music. Gatt has kept practically all the long text, when some judicious cuts were surely called for, and has brought in a small band, placed on one side of the stage throughout, playing pop music and occasionally inviting the audience to do some of the arm waving that is de rigueur in gigs.

This, and making the mock little opera played by Cleante (Jean Marc Cafà, beautifully made up as an Elvis-like, pelvis-pushing singer and guitarist), lover of Argan’s daughter Angelique (Elaine Saliba, as pretty a girl in love as one could desire), leads the first half of the show to drag. The first two acts run into about 90 minutes of playing, music and singing – the kind of length panto aficionados, but not everyone, can take with pleasure.

Despite the skill of the KażinSka band, I could have done with much less music and I could also have done with less indulgence in the mannerisms of certain characters. I’m referring to those characters played by the good comic Pierre Stafrace as the notary who is in cahoots with Argan’s money-hunting wife and – even more – as the nurse who comes to give Argan his enema and is made to repeat the procedure again and again.

All the actors are, rightly I think, made to act in a comically-stylised fashion. But this leads fairly often to a neglect of detail in the psychology with which the dramatist has endowed them.

The over-long first part is rumbustious and, sometimes, when the stage is held by skilful players like Simone Spiteri as the cunning maid Toinette or Magdalena von Kuilenburg as Beline, the wife (as keen on money as she is on good-looking men) there is real fun, but this part as a whole tends to be shapeless and somewhat tiring.

The production is much more successful in the third act, played after the interval, in which Toinette thinks up and cleverly carries out her plans to expose Beline’s venality. She makes Argan see how genuinely his daughter loves him and then makes him agree that Angelique should marry the man she loves and not the medical ninny, Thomas DeOrea (Daniel Azzopardi who rarely overdoes the comicality) Argan has in mind for her.

All the doctors in the play are shown up as learned men but hopeless curers of illness. This act has the pace and, sometimes, the tightness the first two acts certainly lack.

The hypochondriac Argan is the part Moliere wrote for himself to act. It is a comic masterpiece that gives the actor all the opportunity to make use of his skill in character portraiture.

Chrysander Agius is a good comic actor but, besides looking a little too young for the part, he lacks the weightiness it needs. He is at his best in light comic moments as when he grins in delight when Toinette asks him to act dead.

There is a scene, or perhaps two, in which Argan has to use his full vocal volume in expressing his rage, but Agius uses such a voice somewhat too often.

Garbed in one of the colourful costumes designed for the production, Spiteri is a charmingly arrogant Toinette, always ready to change tack if circumstances require, delighted when she can foil the plans of Argan or Beline. She is never afraid to make a sexual pass at any-one she fancies, like Argan’s thoughtful brother Beralde (Carlos Farrugia).

If Argan is the play’s central character, Toinette is the character who makes most important things happen and her scene as a fake doctor is richly hilarious. This versatile actress here triumphs as a comic.

Gatt has elected to keep Moliere’s ending, a send-up of an academic graduation, all pomp and Latin, in which Argan is conferred with a fake doctor of medicine degree. It must have been very funny once, but barely earns a grin now.

Aldo Moretti’s set, composed mainly of large and smaller pillboxes with plenty of hidden windows which open for characters to spy through. It is an expressionistic set that ranks among the very best of this season.