Theatre
A Handbag
Blue Box, M Space, Msida

Plays which deliberately expose the audience to the often hilarious goings-on backstage while a play is actually being rehearsed or produced are not uncommon.

From Shakespeare’s ‘mechanical’ scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Michael Frayn’s classic Noises Off to the more recent and current West End production The Play That Goes Wrong (Shields, Sayer, Lewis), thespians at work have often been used for the hilarity that ensues from their disastrous efforts to put up a play.

Anthony Horowitz’s A Handbag, on the other hand, takes a similar starting point but veers from subtly dark comedy to the underlying personal tragedies of the cast involved in putting up an amateur production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Staged by Masquerade in the Blue Box at M Space, director Andy Smith marshalled a cast of young actors, all of whom show promise, in a short but intense play which belies its apparent adherence to the formula of the play within the play by going against the assumed genre.

Not usually a big fan of Horowitz, I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle nuances in his script, which was originally commissioned in 2009 by the London National Theatre’s New Connections programme for young people.

Horowitz chose wisely when he selected Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to highlight the underlying theme of the play. It does indeed involve a group of young people who are indeed very earnest in putting up the play, in trying to make it work, while others are adamantly earnest that it is a waste of time and entirely out of their depth, seeing it as a fruitless and embarrassing attempt to be liked and validated.

A Handbag was a great combination of clever scripting, on point acting and strong direction

The irony is that they are not ‘earnest’ – truthful, at all about who they really are. As the play progresses, it transpires that the rather inept cast is unusual because of the fact that they all react differently to certain triggers in the play; and while these days it pays for an audience to be aware of theatrical history and the dramatic canon, Horowitz ensures that their understanding of the strong thematic is still clear in the crisp dialogue and strong characterisation which he creates.

Christian Gauci (left) and Joe Azzopardi.

Andy Smith’s solid direction wrought a well-paced, tight development on the piece.

Joseph Zammit plays George, a young man playing the role of Jack Worthing and also directing the Wilde play. His insistence on doggedly pounding ahead with his blundering cast in spite of having a third of the script missing, leads us to believe that he has invested more in this play than simply time and energy.

His gradual unease with the surname Worthing, which reminds him of his home town, where many years before he shared a childhood friendship with fellow cast member Kinsey (Anton Saliba), who plays the butler, Lane, begins to show cracks not just in his leadership but also in the façade that he put up.

Saliba’s Kinsey was calm, collected and almost resigned – poking fun at a situation he has decided he no longer has any control over while Zammit’s George is clutching at straws to gain redemption for the apparently terrible act they once committed. These two actors had a slick dynamic and kept the rhythm moving swiftly in their poignant interactions. Clearly the two most intelligent characters, their attitude contrasted sharply with the other cast members.

The brash, uncouth, fast-talking and streetwise Allan (Joe Azzopardi), who is meant to play the subtly sophisticated Algernon Moncrieff, has problems not just with the script content and its lack of relatability, but also claims that Wilde’s homosexuality is criminal and makes him feel uncomfortable – a reaction to his own personal experiences as a child.

Azzopardi managed to make a character who on the surface seems starkly simple into a nuanced, complex and deeply troubled young man. The same can be said for Steffi Thake’s Rose who tries very earnestly to play Lady Bracknell but who is rather too dim to understand the puns Wilde is so famous for.

She does, however, keep asking questions about the handbag which Jack Worthing was found in and is overly concerned with health and safety while admitting that her good ideas generally have a negative outcome, revealing that there is something sinister in her past too.

Thake’s interpretation of Rose was credible and endearing in a disturbing manner – just the way the character is intended to be. Not too secretive about their confinement in an institution is Naomi Said’s Irene who hates the play and her character Gwendolen and is clearly there for anger and aggression management.

Finally, Christian Gauci’s Specs is the play’s stage manager and so deeply traumatised by his childhood bullying and maternal rejection that he exposes his vulnerabilities to the audience from the start.

His ability to stop stammering and interpret different character parts perfectly show that Specs feels better when he is pretending to be someone other than himself and showcased Gauci’s growing adaptability.

The fact that the genre was subverted and thus made more socially committed and psychologically challenging while maintaining a certain amount of dark humour meant that A Handbag was a great combination of clever scripting, on point acting and strong direction and made for an entertaining show: a pity the run was so short.