Seriously satirical

Robert Farquhar's seemingly randomly titled play Bad Jazz, as produced by the MADC under the direction of Wesley Ellul, makes for a particularly original experience: this because it succeeds in balancing a very narrow tight-rope. While asking many questions recurrent in discussions among theatre practitioners and producers, it also satirises those same questions.

The play refers to the aged question of the line between the truth and fiction of an actor's, and a character's, life. It does this by having as its central characters, actors who are preparing a play and who get more and more involved with their characters as our play develops. Our play opens with an argument between actress Natasha, played by Angelica Coppini, and her boyfriend Ben, David Ellul Mercer, over the role she is currently rehearsing in the play within our play. Ben is outraged by the fact that her director is insisting that she performs an act of oral sex "for real" on stage. While Natasha insists that the performed act won't mean anything, Ben retorts "how much more real do you want it to get?" And thus the play unfolds with the characters of Natasha and her acting colleague Danny, Keith Pavia, getting more and more involved with their roles, becoming their roles even outside of their rehearsal time.

As our play progresses, the line between the character's personal lives and their roles' lives becomes ever more blurred, with many instances where the audience is drawn into uncertainty as to whether the characters are playing themselves or playing at rehearsing. And as the characters grow closer to the roles they are rehearsing within the play, the acting of Ms Coppini and Mr Pavia grows in intensity. Their initial over-dramatisation matures as the play progresses; Ms Coppini especially manages to close the play in a monologue that is credible in its humane self-searching quest. Thus the play's opening scene featuring Natasha's exclamation "I don't want my life turned into some f***ing play" is turned head over heels.

This is all, however, the subtle undertone of the deeper purpose of the play. On top of this are layers of in-your-face dramatic comedy as the characters draw themselves into all possible extreme situations: drugs, oral sex, anal sex, male and female prostitution, bodily fluids, stabbing. And it is because it is all so excessive that the satire emerges: the checklist of possible 21st century melodramatic situations is complete, with many of the references simply represented in a split-second of an instance thus satirising those plays that include such instances for the sake of shocking. The play within our play causes our characters to question whether these acts need to be actually performed on stage, as we see producer Danielle (Maxine Calleja Urry) and director Gavin (Graham V. Arnold) argue the issue out; but in the meantime our characters get on with representing them. And therefore the same question can be asked of this same play.

And in cramming them in this way, the stereotype of actors' excessiveness provides for the farce and the bulk of the audience's laughter. It helps for the audience to be constituted of a theatrical in-crowd able to laugh at its own expense.

Thus perhaps, even though there may very possibly be some intent of shocking, the play becomes more relevant as a satire of our present theatrical context where, unfortunately, a play's shock value seems to be a very real marketing bonus.

This point emerges even stronger through the choice of venue, MADC's Playhouse in Sta Venera away from the mainstream theatres. Nevertheless, the strings of abusive language make for tiring listening, especially in quite a few overly drawn-out scenes, as we actually have to sit and listen to them "for real".

• Bad Jazz is also showing today and tomorrow and next weekend at 8 p.m.