As students from the Margaret Howard Theatre College in London fly in to perform Once on This Island this weekend, Jo Caruana speaks to the college’s founder, Margaret Howard, about its unique relationship with Malta.

The Maltese students currently attending the Margaret Howard Theatre College in London.

It’s not often that a troupe of all-singing, all-dancing performers fly into Malta, fancy costumes at the ready. And it’s even more unusual for some of those performers to actually be Maltese, returning to their roots along with their international colleagues to wow on home ground.

But that’s exactly what’s happening this week as many of the students from the Margaret Howard Theatre College (MHTC) in London arrive to add the final touches to their performance of Once on This Island, which they recently performed at the Margaret Howard Theatre in London.

Eight of those performing are Maltese students currently working their way through the three-year course at the MHTC. The show will run at Spazju Kreattiv at St James Cavalier this week, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening, with a matinee addition on Saturday, as part of the Spazju Kreattiv programme.

“At MHTC we’ve developed quite a special relationship with Malta,” says Margaret Howard, the college’s founder. “It all started with Ben Darmanin, who joined us as a student a few years back, before continuing his studies at the Royal Academy and then going out into the field as a professional. He was a fantastic student and threw himself into college life 150 per cent – as he does with everything. He really left an impression and, through him, I learnt so much about Malta and its people.”

Margaret Howard

Howard then started getting involved with drama on the local scene. She was asked to judge the TV show Bravi, and offered scholarships to her college to two of its winners. After that, more Maltese students started to audition to join MHTC and Howard and her team continued to build on that.

“I find that Maltese students are so hard-working with loads of potential, and they bring such charm with them,” she continues. “It’s clear that they really want a future in the arts and it’s exciting for us to be able to help them to achieve that. The fact that we now have eight Maltese among our student body shows that the relationship is definitely getting stronger. They are all very talented and I am sure they will do well.”

All the Maltese will be performing, alongside 15 other students from the first, second and third year groups at MHTC.

“We’re quite unique in our approach in that we like to give performance opportunities to all our students, regardless of whether they’ve just joined us or will soon be graduating. If they audition, do well and suit a part, then they will be cast.”

Once on This Island, which is set in the French Antilles, tells the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl who falls in love above her class. It is told by a group of Caribbean peasants as they sit around a fire to wait out a terrible storm. With the gods looking over her, Ti Moune’s journey of unrequited love comes to prove that the power of love is stronger than the power of death.

I find that Maltese students are so hard-working with loads of potential, and they bring such charm with them. It’s clear they want a future in the arts

The original Broadway production ran from 1990 to 1991, and the West End production opened in 1994, where it won the Olivier Award for the Best New Musical in 1995.

“We’ve performed this show before, a good while back, and we loved it,” continues Howard. “It’s a great showcase for our students as they all get their moment to shine, as well as a lovely story. It’s the sort of gentle show that everyone will enjoy, and is suitable for young and the young at heart alike. It’s colourful, entertaining and the music is really wonderful.”

The musical is also quite particular in its style. It uses the tradition of storytelling to pass down history, values and insight from one generation to the next. Written by Lynn Ahrens and with music by Stephen Flaherty, it has been called a cross somewhere between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

“At MHTC we really believe in the power of performance for our students, which is why we work towards shows so regularly,” Howard adds. “Most of our audiences are made up of friends and family, so that can be hard for our international students, whose family are so far away and can’t always fly up to watch them. This time we have brought the show to them, and of course opened it up to the public too. We believe it will be wonderful for all the Maltese students’ friends and families to see how far they have come since joining MHTC.”

As for the future of her college’s relationship with Malta, Howard hopes this will continue too.

“I truly believe Maltese students to be very talented and we would love to see even more of them join us to further their artistic development. It all starts with Once on This Island, but I look forward to lots of other potential collaborations in the future,” she adds.