Theatre
The Christmas Comedy Cavalcade
Salesian Theatre

Everybody likes to end the year in style and in the recently concluded Christmas season, TAC Theatre produced a show that veered away from their more serious fare, in favour of what promised to be a rollicking comedy bonanza.

The Christmas Comedy Cavalcade was staged at the Salesian Theatre in Sliema. Directed by Wesley Ellul, who was also one of the writers for this sketch show, along with Matt Bonanno, David Chircop, Philip Leone-Ganado, Joseph Zammit and Chiara Hyzler, the series of shows, held during the last few days of 2013, generally delivered what it set out to do.

Buoyed by their previous successes in similar comedy shows, Ellul, once again teamed up with actor Chris Dingli and added fresh blood to the mix with Marc Cabourdin, Jo Caruana, Colin Fitz, Steve Hili and Pia Zammit.

Dingli was consistently on tack and in top form in all of his performances

The show’s opening ensemble piece was a send-up of the very eventful Maltese sociopolitical calendar for 2013, set to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas. It was cleverly written, making for a good warm-up piece but it was slightly under-performed, which was rather a pity, given its comedic potential. It did have the audience smiling however, and the cast soon warmed up to give their best in individual sketches, which showcased their particular brand of comic timing and dead-pan expressions.

There were, of course, a couple of sketches which didn’t quite do it for me, in particular The Baby Jesus Stealers, which was just rather weird and left me feeling a tad “meh”; while the adaptation of Monty Python’s parrot sketch, with a flamingo, felt a little too contrived to be a tribute. There were also several jibes towards the other Christmas shows – namely the pantomimes which spurred the cast to re-enact a panto with all its classic elements in the shortest time possible and was quite a success.

Amid the expanded number of sketches this time round, some gems emerged which did not only have me in fits of laughter, but were so well delivered that they were found entertaining by some audience members who were not as au courant with the Maltese scene at first hand. This is the mark of good comedy and good audience communication.

Fitz’s most solid performance was his solo proclamation as a speech-giving politician in Fitzerland, a clear parody of local politicians’ pedantic and transparent way of attempting to hoodwink the electorate.

The Blog was Marc Cabourdin’s piece de résistance, in which he parodied another famous actor parodying an infamousblogger. Not only was the song catchy and funny, but the concept of a double commentary working on different meta-levels was actually pretty clever in its conception.

Caruana and Zammit really fed off each other and gave a couple of great performances, especially in Vera’s Pastry Delights, the innuendo-laden skit where one young entrepreneur (Caruana) is interviewed on the radio by Vera the host (Zammit) about her new venture in high-end traditional pastries, that is, pastizzi.

Their other star sketch, and possibly one of my favourites, was The VVIP Crowd, where two pseudo-posh Maltese ladies of leisure have a conversation of the socially enlightening kind. They came across as equally ridiculous as the IT Crowd which gives it its name.

Dingli himself was consistently on tack and in top form in all of his performances, with Simon’s Start and Confessions of a Panto Dame being two of the ones I enjoyed the most. In the former, he sang about the trials and tribulations of the newly-appointed Nationalist Party leader, nailing mannerisms and drawing the audience’s approval, while in the other, he parodied the typical panto dame and made some very socially apt observations as he went along. Dingli’s natural talent for comedy and his adaptability made him one of the stars of the show, along with Caruana and Zammit.

Of the ensemble pieces I found captured the best elements of a sketch show – also because they were so well written – were Maltese for Dummies by Hyzler and Gej Hova by Steve Hili.

Both sketches exposed the often dark humour of the Maltese cultural background, and had energy and a good pace.

All of these elements were what made The Christmas Comedy Cavalcade a highly watchable and entertaining show.