The classic Don Juan is set to get the Maltese treatment at our national theatre next weekend. Alex Vella Gregory interviews director Chris Gatt about Moliere’s masterpiece.
“We are living in a Baroque Age,” Chris Gatt, who currently holds the unenviable title of the most infamous theatre director on the island, starts off. I use the word ‘infamous’ judiciously, mainly because he was one of the lot recently found guilty of corrupting Maltese morality by attempting to stage the play Stitching.
All excess is bad, whether it is religious fundamentalist or liberalism
But this interview is not about Stitching, banning or condemning. This is about the upcoming production of Moliere’s classic piece Don Juan, a masterpiece of 17th- century French drama, which was banned and condemned for being immoral and subversive.
“It’s the most moral plays which get banned.”
Of course, one would hardly consider the figure of Don Juan as moral. If anything, in the collective imagination, he epitomises the extreme libertine, whose legendary promiscuity brings about his own downfall. But this is where Gatt invites us to reconsider this complex figure.
“Don Juan rebels against society and its pressure to make him respectable. He sees his father’s hypocrisy and defies him openly.”
During the interview, at no point does Gatt condone or condemn Don Juan’s behaviour. He is simply keen to explore and understand. For him, Moliere’s play is as contemporary as it is baroque. This is why Gatt has also opted to update some of the cultural references in the text.
“We consider ourselves liberal. We have divorce and separation, marriage is not for life, it is fine to have affairs, we jump from bed to bed… and yet the play sends out a message that the result of that is not necessarily good.”
To reinforce the contemporary aspect, the play will be performed in a Maltese translation, but with English subtitles. Gatt explains how the set will be constructed out of multiple screens onto which images and words can be easily projected.
Suddenly, the baroque element starts shining through. The tension between restlessness and solidity, light and dark, moral and immoral; all these conflicting ideas merge into one universal narrative.
Gatt’s approach to the narrative is not all that foreign to the baroque style. Think of Preti’s vault for St John’s Co-Cathedral. The narrative unfolds almost simultaneously, and yet the artist masterfully manipulates our senses to absorb everything one scene at a time.
Of course one could argue that Preti’s work is to the glory of God, whereas Moliere’s is a celebration of human nature (with all its contradictions). But in both cases, and indeed in all baroque art, it’s the tension between both elements which drives the work forward.
“All excess is bad, whether it is religious, fundamentalist or liberalism.” Is this why the play got banned I ask him? “Censorship is not about banning danger-ous things, but about things which are dangerous to the powers that be.”
Gatt is not at all uncomfortable about the parallelisms between the two plays, especially in terms of their performance history. He considers the two plays as works which were “misunderstood in their own times”. He does play upon the connections, but without descending into propaganda.
It will be interesting to see Gatt, renowned mostly for his interpretations of contemporary plays, dealing with a 300-year-old text. It will also be interesting to see Moliere from a contemporary Maltese perspective. And who knows, it might prove so subversive as to get banned… yet again.
Don Juan is being staged as part of the Valletta International Baroque Festival on Saturday and next Sunday at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta.
www.teatrumanoel.com.mt