Happy birthday Infanta!

Teatru Qroqq recently put up a very entertaining children's show, guided and directed by Isabelle Gatt, who is a lecturer for the expressive arts and whose research is centred around drama in education.

It all started against a backdrop of musicians, followed shortly after by a chorus of girls dressed as flowers. The costumes were lovely and added a lot of professionalism to the scenes. The flowers were dressed in black with a headdress according to their flower type. They were well synchronised in their act and also quite humorous, which I liked a lot. They were dressed as roses, bluebells, tulips and sunflowers and each group of flowers explained its characteristics. The play was initially narrated by two jokers who spoke in rhyme and also animated the show by prompting the audience with phrases like "intom kollox sew?" The audience was mostly made up of children accompanied by their parents and the play is also set to be performed for schoolchildren. Thus involving the audience was an appropriate idea.

The storyline was adapted from Oscar Wilde's fairytale The Birthday of the Infanta, one of the stories from his collection A House of Pomegranates. The story deals with a princess who was never shown any affection; on her 12th birthday she had a party organised with a range of entertainments any girl could wish for. However, what she really wanted was some attention from her widowed father which she didn't get hence the spoilt attitude of the child.

The entertainment prepared for the Infanta's birthday party was truly delightful. It was presented by a Circus Master. The latter was interpreted by Sara Ann Baldacchino, who also helped with the direction together with Kirsten Said, who played Infanta. Being set in Spain, the entertainment prepared for this Infanta's party involved a flamenco dance, besides a ballet dance, a gymnast show and Dora the Explorer who was impressively interpreted by four-year-old Christina Magrin. The flamenco dance was choreographed with the kind support of Rosana Maya and the Latino dance was exquisitely carried out by professional dancers Joanne Grech and Jonathan Borg Castillo. Mr Borg Castillo also played the role of one of the clowns together with Stephanie Calleja.

The entertainment was very child-oriented and the children in the audience were called out to play games and participate. The story was also partly narrated by Rian Gladwish, dressed up as a butterfly, who explained the importance of accepting one another for what we are and stressed the educational message of the play. The entertainment continued with a show by the village dwarf in Oscar Wilde's story. In this play Kwazimundu, the hunchback of Notre Dame, played this role interpreted once again very professionally by Matthew Sultana.

The hunchback is happily entertaining the crowd of party guests but doesn't realise that they are ridiculing him for his strange ways. Infanta throws a flower to him and tells him to meet her later on in the palace for another show. Kwazimundu is convinced she must love him but when he goes to the palace that evening he stumbles into his reflection as he finds himself in front of a mirror. Having never seen his reflection before, the hunchback becomes hysterical and realises that Infanta must pity him not love him. When Infanta and her friends and family find him lying motionless they realise he died of a broken heart. Infanta resolves never to invite people with a heart to her palace again.

The lesson here was to teach that superficial beauty shouldn't be all we see. The story ends with a song sung by Claudia Magrin regarding the cruelty that superficiality may bring. This story has no happy ending. It is a harsh lesson to teach a young audience and you may wish to think twice if your child is impressionable. However, on the whole, the play was colourful and gripping and very well organised. The setting was vibrant and MITP was transformed into a welcoming place. This project was the fruit of a lot of hard work and I'm sure it proved to be educational for the student teachers taking part and not only for the young audience.