The wicked witch in Pinokkio gets a total rehaul with a more local flavour.

The last Christmas show I had to review this season was Kumpanija Teatru Rjal’s rumbustious Pinokkio. With a Maltese script and lyrics by Snits and Toni Busuttil, and directed by Ray Abdilla, the production was characterised by a high volume of sound much of the time. There was a dame, Roxanne by name (Toni Busuttil), who has very few inhibitions about politics and sex; and a smallish but highly competent and attractive set of dancers from Felix Busuttil’s company.

I have always known pantos to be noisy, but this one exceed-ed most I have ever seen. Even Pinokkio’s (Snits) fairy god-mother, Fairy Farina (Ina Robinich) can produce astounding decibels once she loses her temper, while Saħħara (the sorceress, Julie Pomorski) speaks at a painfully high pitch all the time to voice her wicked views and plans. A slanging match between these two, conducted in true ċerċura style, probably marked the show’s climax in the production of decibels. I need hardly add that Busuttil and most of his fellows on stage are very rarely soft-voiced.

The role played by Pinokkio is so sketchy that Snits, a justly popular comic, finds himself with very little to do

Like most other Christmas pantos this one’s script includes wisecracks about our politicians and politics, but Pinokkio probably exceeds the average also in this respect. The show’s take on Carlo Collodi’s talking cricket, who serves as Pinokkio’s conscience, is called Antonio. In his first scene he carries a Maltese arloġġ tal-lira hung, significantly, round his neck. When he is said to have been a former minister of finance, both the clock and the name click into place.

Antonio (Simon Curmi) is, however, one of the show’s goodies – unlike Saħħara, who is made up (with green face and grotesquely pointed chin) and costumed like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She is the major baddie of the show, and is clearly associated in the text with a blogger whose name has become a byword for mordant criticism.

Other personalities are brought in by name, but fleetingly. Joseph Muscat, for instance, gets numer-ous mentions, most of them fleeting ones, while another minister is not mentioned by name but is clearly referred to when a number of uniformed policemen doff their uniform jackets and reveal themselves to be ready to act as waiters.

As is not uncommon in panto, the plot line is weak, and in fact the role played by Pinokkio is so sketchy that Snits, a justly popular comic, finds himself with very little to do, save dance and sing. He has a longish nose to start off with and, on the night I viewed the show, he suffered a mishap when the nose was supposed to grow longer and the prostethic dropped off.

The misadventures in the traditional fable are replaced with an ill-advised venture to Paceville. Here, Pussy and Wolf – Collodi’s Fox and Cat (played by Franky Borg and J Anvil) – kidnap him, thus preventing him temporarily from changing from puppet to human boy.

In a previous scene he has also acquired, temporarily, a donkey’s ears. But he is never really bothered with his father, and does not have to venture inside a whale to find him, as in the traditional tale. This episode would have suited a more spectacular show than this. Manuel Pace’s flexible set is colourful and good-looking, but the production mostly steers clear of the technically elaborate.

The best feature of the script is the lyrics, naughty and sometimes pungent, and often quite comprehensible when sung – a remarkable feature in a panto.

Much of the comic playing is very acceptable, and both the band (under Abigail Brown) and the dancers/chorus (choreography Felix Busuttil) are more than that.

As in the Masquerade panto I have already reviewed, it is the Dame who is outstanding. Toni Busuttil is the wickedest dame I have seen for a long time. Wearing costumes ranging from the semi-sexy, showing a lot of leg, to a flaming red outfit with a wig for his big solo scene in the second part, he is brimming with self-confidence. The solo scene with the audience shows him playing hilarious tricks with sexual ambiguity, as well as with the convention that pantos are shows for the whole family. The way he dealt with, and suppressed, a young person in the audience who heckled him again and again during this scene was masterly.