Eduardo de Filippo’s Filumena Marturano (Talenti at the Manoel Theatre) is probably the best known of his works, and rightly so. It is popular theatre in which light comedy and comedy of a more serious sort are skilfully welded together.

What really makes the play, of course, is the acting of Filumena (Rita Camilleri) and of Soriano (Mario Micallef)- Paul Xuereb

Theatre people like Albert Marshall and Mario Azzopardi, who are seeking to produce a brand of ‘teatrin’ that can be taken seriously not just by the unsophisticated theatregoer but by everyone else, can do worse than study this comedy and other pieces by de Filippo such as Questi Fantasmi to see how this can perhaps be done. But then, I feel sure both of them know these plays quite well and have learned from them already.

What places Filumena Marturano a cut above some of this playwright’s other plays is the central character.

Filumena, now middle-aged, has been the mistress of Domenico Soriano, a wealthy playboy of the not greatly refined Neapolitan kind, and after having been installed in his house, has been for 25 years his housekeeper and informal business manager.

Now approaching the age of 60, Soriano does what many men have done – try to revive his youth by getting himself a young lover – and this Filumena cannot bear, so she pretends to be at death’s door and gets Soriano to marry her on her presumed deathbed.

When he discovers the trick, Soriani understandably is furious and has it out with her, at one stage with the assistance of a lawyer, but Filumena has an important card up her sleeve, making both Soriano and the audience gasp in surprise.

Filumena is no ordinary woman scheming to keep her hold over Soriano. She is a very sensitive person who has sought for years to control her emotions. In fact, she has never shed a tear in Soriano’s presence.

Unbeknown to her partner, she has had three sons at a time when she was in a brothel and had sex with many men, including Soriano, who took her away from prostitution after falling in love with her.

One of the sons is Soriano’s, but when in their heated discussions held after the discovery of her trick, she tells Soriano about the sons, she refuses again and again to tell him who of the three is his. She did not abort any of the three children after imagining that an image of the Virgin to whom she was always devoted had given her the injunction that “offspring are offspring”, so she has secretly brought them up separately, utilising funds she has abstracted from Soriano.

De Filippo presents Filumena as a woman of great moral strength, her motherly instinct prevailing over everything else. She has always felt duty-bound to give the children care and resources that are equal, and at the play’s peak this is what she insists upon with Soriano even when, astounded by her courage and tremendous love, he agrees to marry her – legally this time.

The play ends with the three men addressing Soriano as ‘papà’ and Filumena experiencing the luxury of finally shedding tears.

Salvu Mallia has done a good job of directing the piece and casting it. Mallia is usually at his best when giving a classic the common touch, such as when he directed Twelfth Night for MADC as it were next door to commedia dell’arte.

In Filumena he has made much of the funny lines and even funnier moments relating to Soriano’s indignation at having been tricked, and directs lovingly the secondary characters such as Ninette Micallef’s Rosalia, Filumena’s confidante and assistant in the housework, who is never just the stereotyped sharp and sharp-tongued servant, but a fully-fledged human being who lives the dramatic moments through which Filumena is going.

On the other hand, Snits plays Alfredo, Soriano’s right-hand man as the two-dimensional character he is meant to be. A skilful comic actor, he makes the most of his small part.

Audrey Harrison also puts life into Diana, Soriano’s young bit on the side. Though scared of Filumena, she never stresses this as some inexperienced actresses might have done, and hints at Diana’s ordinariness despite her smart clothing.

Mallia makes use of Lorna Fiorini’s housemaid Lucia to sing Neapolitan ballad as a bridge between one scene and another, and in particular to give Filumena enough to make her drastic costume change between scenes three and four, but I expected her to be rather more flirtatious in her scene with Sean Buhagiar’s Riccardo.

Buhagiar, Alan Fenech (Michele) and Carlos Farrugia (Umberto) are a well-contrasted trio as Filumena’s sons. Mallia lets himself go a little too much in his direction of their tussle at the end of act one and in their out-of-tune singing in act two. This, I thought, was teatrin as I dislike it.

What really makes the play, of course, is the acting of Filumena and of Soriano. Rita Camilleri, I gather, is well-known as an actress at Sliema’s Salesian theatre as well as on television, but this was my first experience of a performance by her.

For me it was a revelation, for her Filumena has the strength and the dignity of a person who has transcended her humble and indeed shameful background through her devotion to the sons she has born, a devotion that has enabled her to undertake a head-on conflict with the man she has always loved, despite his selfishness, but whose recent behaviour makes her fear that those sons will never benefit from Soriano’s wealth.

Her portrait is detailed and beautifully realistic, except perhaps that it never suggests the little coarseness she is unlikely to have shed, and never aspires to the semi-tragic dimension one or two great actresses have given the part.

It is a relief for the audience to see her tears as the curtain falls.

Mario Micallef has added Soriano to the long parts for which he has become so well known. He makes it clear that though always well off, he is not and has never been refined in his manners, and when, as in the play’s opening scene, he loses his temper, he loses it well and proper.

On the other hand, as the beauty of Filumena’s character is revealed to him more and more, he softens perceptibly and wins the audience over.

If I have any adverse comment to make, it is that he makes too much of a meal of his last scene with Filumena; his roaming round the stage at this point is mannered and detracts from the importance of his words.

Moreover, both he and Camilleri on rare occasions allow their love of pianissimo speaking to go too far, making it unlikely they were comprehensible beyond the first rows of the stalls.