This Christmas, Chris Dingli has gone on from his previous shows with Malcolm Galea to create a new one, The Christmas Comedy Cavalcade.
With a different acting team and with scripts written by Dingli himself and a number of other authors – the Comedy Knights – as they call themselves, have come up with a production ably directed and artfully designed by Wesley Ellul.
The production is more sophisticated than, say, Bla Kondixin. Only once or twice – such as in Dingli’s Vera’s Pastry Nights, played admirably straight by Jo Caruana and Pia Zammit, with its repeated doubles entendres – is it about as raw as that show. Caruana and Zammit I found more enjoyable as two social poseurs in The VVIP Crowd (also by Dingli).
A good number of pieces are satirical, and revolve around Maltese politicians, politics and commentators. The main targets are Joseph Muscat and his Labour government, and especially his projected sale of Maltese citizenship to anyone coming up with the lolly.
A couple of pieces strongly target those Nationalist voters who thought they were being clever by voting Labour last March. Dingli’s acid lyrics lament: “Whatever happened to my PN”, were sung with passion by Zammit. Simon’s Start, a musical monologue performed by Dingli as the leader of the PN, appeared to voice the view of some who are still not sure he is the right leader. PN turncoats get their worst in It Wasn’t Me (lyrics by Steve Hili), sung with restrained indignation by Marc Cabourdin and Dingli.
The main targets are Joseph Muscat and his Labour government, and especially his projected sale of Maltese citizenship
The most devastating satire on Labour is Matt Bonanno’s and Philip Leone Ganado’s Maltese Cabinet Party, with its hilarious depiction of the way in which the Labour government is rewarding its faithful. Colin Fitz lays on the satire with a trowel in Fitzerland, another good script by Dingli. His targets are Alfred Sant’s now half-forgotten idea about Malta becoming a Switzerland in the Mediterranean, as well as the still controversial citizenship for sale project.
Hili, also a performer in this show, has written the trenchant lyrics for The Blogger, the target being a well-known woman blogger whose sometimes vitriolic comments make her widely feared and, shall we say, unpopular. Performed in high seriousness by Cabourdin in a black wig, the piece is surely the darkest of all the turns in the show, provoking uneasy giggles and never guffaws. The piece satirising the recent antics of one of our most egregious magistrates is just as pungent, but lighter in tone.
Chiara Hyzler’s Maltese for Dummies gets laughs from the way in which the Maltese language can make something innocent sound very ribald, while in Hili’s Teleshop, a send-up of Christmas selling tactics, Caruana (whose comedy grows stronger) nearly steals the show as she poses in her bikini. The Flamingo Sketch, cleverly adapted by Dingli (who also plays the flamingo) from Monty Python’s well-known Parrot sketch, is the only piece in the show with an environmental theme.
The Comedy Knights make sure we remember this is a Christmas show with their opening number The 12 Days of Christmas, the colourful costumes of the cast being undercut by the political and social comments in Joseph Zammit’s lyrics.
The Christmas story is present in the Three Wise Men, who come to visit the infant Jesus, while a fourth one – unbiblical – just loses his way. The regular thefts of the effigy of the infant Jesus from cribs in public spaces is the subject of Baby Jesus Stealers (Bonanno and Leone Ganado) involves a trio of comic satanists, black cloaks and cowls and all.
The show also pays tribute to the most popular Christmas show of all, the panto. Dingli, costumed as a panto dame, back to the audience, is first seen taking his bow facing what is meant to be the Manoel Theatre’s golden auditorium. He then turns round to face, to his great surprise, another audience (Dingli and Zammit) with whom he reveals his views about this beloved genre.
Finally, the entire cast perform a speeded-up panto in about four minutes, thus creating a new record for the Guinness Book of Records. Even more breathlessly, they then perform another one in just 18 seconds... By the end, the entire cast was miraculously still alive.