Kate De Cesare as the sultry Heidi-the-Ho.

Theatre
Adult Entertainment
St James Cavalier

The concept of what art is gets pushed to its limit in Elaine May’s 2002 play Adult Entertainment, which tackles the idea that exposing yourself to canonical literature will have an positive effect on your outlook on life.

MADC’s production of May’s play at St James Cavalier last weekend saw the protagonists moving from the elevation of certain body parts to the elevation of brows in the most academic, if rather unusual, manner.

What I found interesting about May’s play is that it starts in a light-hearted manner, poking fun at the stereotypes in the porn industry, with Heidi-the-Ho’s (Kate De Cesare) salacious cable show mourning the death of one of the porn industry’s most prolific directors, along with a host of colourful, and scantily-clad guests; but ends on a note of much darker comedy.

When Vixen (Katherine Brown) suggests she and her friends team up to write, direct and star in their very own porno, setting up a production company and splitting the profits five-ways (pun not intended), the motley cast happily agree, keen to work on a script that might give them some scope for acting rather than simply moaning and having sex.

The end result was both engaging and intriguing

Frosty Moon (Isabel Warrington) and Jimbo (Stefan Farrugia) are completely on board with the idea, as is Heidi, but Guy’s (Stefan Cachia Zammit) script leaves them feeling as though they’re stuck in the same loop – with next to no lines and wooden characters who simply fornicate with each other.

Enter Jerry (Philip Leone Ganado), Heidi’s cameraman and bona fide Yale graduate, who is recruited by the group to write and transform their film into “a good movie with sex added”. Jerry’s agenda is to write and direct a controversial art house film and prove his worth as an artist and academic manqué to his pretentious university contemporaries.

He decides to get the cast to really get to grips with their emotions and to channel the thoughts of the great authors he studied at university. This suddenly shocks their vacuous intellectual system and fills their ‘empty vessels’ with Marlow, Dylan Thomas, Flaubert and Dostoyevsky, among others.

Very soon, their way of looking at art and life takes a surprising turn. They want more of both and criticise Jerry’s script, for “not being good enough”.

Director Marylu Coppini chose to transform this production into a musical play, with several interludes of live song thanks to accompanist Luca Zerafa and original music compositions by Louiselle Vassallo and Paul Abela, set to Michaela Dimech’s choreography.

With musical numbers escalating from the crass to the tasteful, culminating with The Whores’ Song from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the music also exposed the characters’ journey to greater erudition. While the pace at times slowed down a tad and could have done with a speedier line pick-up, I found the casting of Leone Ganado as Jerry to be wisely planned. Warrington’s Frosty Moon made the most of her sass and innuendo, strutting her stuff on stage and poking fun at the porn industry. Brown’s Vixen and Cachia Zammit’s Guy were the more streetwise and sharp of the gang, with their strong vocal timbre making its mark.

Farrugia’s Jimbo, on the other hand, proved to be a more complex character and aided the climax in the turn of events, transitioning well from disinterest to realisation and disillusionment. De Cesare’s Heidi was naïve and sweet-natured, exposing the simple nature behind a sultry persona.

The end result of Adult Entertainment was both engaging and intriguing, with moments of highly air-headed hilarity contrasting with flashes of insightful lucidity which made for an interesting, alternative evening out.

• Adult Entertainment is also being staged tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday and on March 21-23.