Paul Xuereb finds the Maltese version of panto, in Teatru Rjal’s Merry Poppins, a distinct departure from the traditional formula.
Christmas panto in Maltese sounds and feels different from the panto in English (or rather Minglish) of Masquerade and MADC productions, especially when it comes to the naughtier element of the genre, the double entendre and the smutty innuendo.
The same joke, the same pun, sounds more daring in Maltese than in English
The same joke, the same pun, sounds more daring in Maltese than in English. For people like me who reached adulthood during colonial times, English remains a slightly classy language, and even the F-word often sounds less audacious than the corresponding word in Maltese.
Teatru Rjal’s Merry Poppins (Catholic Institute) has much of the uproarious fun of its English cousins. This was true even if Joe Julian Farrugia’s book left most of the traditional panto elements, involving audience participation, to the second act, leaving much of the first act to variations on scenes and moments of Mary Poppins, the film.
In fact, the second act was much funnier than the first, partly because it was also much bawdier. The panto’s dame, Mary Poppins of course, is new to the game, but Toni Busuttil does it as if to the manner born. This dame’s grotesquely baroque costumes are left to the last 30 minutes or so of the show, the costumes in the first act being roughly Victorian.
In the first act, Mary Poppins is a kindly if very eccentric educator, but in the second act she is transformed into an expert in audience teasing and a producer of comments and jokes ranging from the plain absurd to the blue and the risqué. Busuttil has an impressive mastery of the stage as a dame and should have a long career in this kind of part open to him.
My one reservation was that on the night I saw the show, which was being seen by scores of children of all ages as well as hundreds of adults, he went sometimes over the top when it came to coarse remarks. I gather, however, that he toned this down in subsequent performances.
Farrugia converts the unscrupulous banker for whom Mr Banks (Neville Refalo) works in Scrooge Jnr (Renzo Bonello). Is this perhaps an illegitimate son of Ebeneezer, about whom Dickens stayed mum? Scrooge Jnr seems to do much of his business in his bedroom, together with his surprising business partners Desperate Dan (Brian Farrugia) and Dennis the Menace (Gabriel Lia) and his floozy, Grace Bond (Julie Pomorski). The latter is gifted with the most piercing of singing and speaking voices.
Brian Farrugia is not the most amusing of panto actors and tries to raise laughs by imitating an ’Allo, ’Allo character, by incessantly repeating the Maltese equivalent of “I shall say this only once”. But he did get a good laugh when he and Scrooge disagreed on who of the two is the panto’s real baddy.
This critic’s decision was that Bonello is this show’s funny baddy. He made the most of it when he had what looked like an unplanned misadventure on trying to get out of bed, dragged the bed behind him and looked as if he had a fairly bad fall. His high-pitched speech and splendidly overdone miserliness were just right.
The Scrooge scenes are signalled by lighting up in sinister mode a huge ghastly figure to one side of the set, a figure that was out of tune with this Scrooge, who is a miser but not a panto demon king. In fact, one of the weaknesses of Farrugia’s script is that it lacks the supernatural element. There is no friendly fairy and there is no sorcerer, witch or diabolic character.
The only stab at anything like the supernatural is when, towards the end, Mary Poppins comes in on Scrooge, like one of Marley’s ghosts, garbed like a silver Statue of Liberty, and brings about his conversion. The show needs a couple of other scenes of this type.
Michael, the Banks boy, gives Snits little scope for his undoubted comic talents, while Ina Robinich makes his sister Jane into an impossibly screechy girl.
Laura Bruno (Mrs Banks) should have been given more to sing, for what she sang she did very well. Mr Banks often sounded, and I imagine this was intended, like a heavy father from melodrama, while Rodney Gauci as a picturesque, tousle-headed Jack, sang nicely and interviewed the kids on stage in the best of humour.
The three London bobbies (Mario Camilleri, Franky Borg and Alan Falzon) had a couple of good scenes, one of them producing English versions of what his sergeant said, many of them sounding like double entendres.
There is no chorus – another departure from the English tradition – but the half-a-dozen dancers, all girls, are pretty and do Felix and Jennifer Busuttil’s choreography proud.