Ġorġ Peresso’s second venture as a writer of plays connected with Latin literature is called Plautus Strait. Though it is claimed to be based on the Roman dramatist Plautus’ comedy Trinummus, the connection is very thin; the piece, running for around an hour, is really a reasonably funny but thin piece about what goes on among the workers and visitors of a bar-cum-brothel in Strait Street during colonial times.
The piece is directed by Keith Borg, who keeps the action moving fast, but he could have insisted on better diction from a couple of his cast
The performance itself is presented at the Splendid in Strait Street. The building is said to have been a brothel during this once infamous street’s period as a stamping ground for the British forces, Maltese prostitutes and pimps, and Maltese men in pursuit of sex unbound by morality.
Peresso fashionably does not present his piece in a straightforward manner but as a series of scenes attributed somewhat rashly to Plautus, which are being rehearsed by a group of amateurs whose relations in real life are more interesting than those of the characters they are portraying.
Lilian Pace as Bianca, the production’s director, has a hard time getting her actors to remember their lines, perform a scene satisfactorily and, in general, to concentrate on the rehearsal more than on their personal problems.
We discover that in the play within the play, the brothel (called the Three Bob, one of the piece’s few direct reference to Plautus, since ‘Three Bob’ corresponds to the Latin Trinummus) that is the scene of the action has been bought by Mike, called Duminku in the programme (Gilbert Formosa) from the young prodigal Pawlinu (Aldo Zammit) whose sole aim in life appears to pursue the girls in the Three Bob.
These are Inopia (Olivia-Ann Marmarà) and Luksurja (Alison Abela). An unfamiliar visitor (David Scicluna Giusti), whom the habitués call Il-Viċi because he reminds them of a vice-parish priest they know, is mysterious and so he is suspected of being an official or police officer in disguise.
Nightingale (Mandy Mifsud), who may or not be a higher class of tart than the others, and is in fact a woman who knows her Freud and her Jung, is clearly attracted to him.
The actress playing Luksuria, we find out, is having an affair with Mike and is envied by the actress playing Inopia, who occasionally bursts into the coarsest of language in speeches Peresso clearly enjoyed writing. But both girls do not mind being hugged and groped by Pawlinu.
We never learn how the play is meant to end, for Bianca is forced to suspend the rehearsal as matters become more unruly after declaring most indignantly that she will be auditioning an entirely new cast for the production.
She leaves in a huff with the quiet and rather dim Maria (Louise Fenech) who, the others sniggeringly say, is Bianca’s sexual partner, leaving Nightingale alone with Il-Viċi, who turns out to be really a shy man who is delighted when Nightingale clearly shows her sexual interest in him.
I nearly forgot to say that old Plautus himself makes an appearance in the person of Peresso himself wearing a funny little hat. He is invisible to the actors and vainly tries to intervene on one occasion.
The piece is directed to Keith Borg, who keeps the action moving fast and distinguishes clearly between the two levels of the work. Since the action represents a rehearsal of another action, he has an excellent reason for allowing his actors to improvise and play without much care for polish, but he could have insisted on better diction from a couple of his cast.