Yasmina Reza is a French playwright who became famous with her witty, satirical play Art and, more recently, for Life Times 3 and God of Carnage. A Maltese version of the latter, Alla tal-Qirda, by Toni Aquilina, now appearing at St James Cavalier, was directed by Lino Farrugia with good care for its savage comedy, with this version wisely changing the original Parisian setting to a Maltese one.
A fiercely funny black comedy that is bound to make an audience think ruefully about society and human relations
Many will think the title misleading, for this long one-acter is a fiercely funny black comedy that is bound to make an audience think ruefully about society and human relations. Set throughout in the sitting room of the couple, in this version named Michael and Veronica Hili, it depicts the changing nature of an encounter between this couple and another couple, Alan and Ninette Riolo.
The relationship changes from the civility – not a deep one, admittedly – of the first minutes, to barely restrained hostility and, ultimately, to unrestrained anger, verbal abuses and physical upsets.
The two couples have met to discuss an earlier incident in which the Riolos’ 11-year-old son Bernard struck the Hilis’ son in the face with a piece of wood, breaking two of his teeth during a quarrel.
All the Hilis, especially Veronica, want is for Bernard to acknowledge his fault by apologising to their son. The Riolos, however, feel this was just a children’s quarrel that was being blown up to a serious matter.
Alan, a well-to-do lawyer for a big drug corporation, says he has no problem about meeting any dentist’s fee for the repair of the injury. This further angers Veronica for whom the question is not one of damages but of acknowledging full responsibility for the injury.
What contributes greatly to making an agreement between the couples very difficult is the fact that every couple of minutes Alan’s mobile rings and he has to deal with a hot problem: the drug firm he represents is being accused that one of its important drugs has serious side effects. The firm’s annual general meeting is round the corner so Alan advises again and again not to make a public acknowledgement about side effects. All he says is being overheard by the others, leading Michael to speak disgustedly about the dishonesty of the pharmaceutical industry.
Reza now drags in a very convenient coincidence, when Michael receives a call from his mother, who has been prescribed the famous drug and may be having some trouble with it. To Alan’s chagrin, Michael advises her to stop taking the drug and the relations between the two men get grimmer.
Meanwhile Michael himself has been revealed as cold-blooded when describing how he has taken his son’s pet hamster and left it defenceless to die in the street. This not only shocks the Riolos but reveals that Veronica finds Michael’s act just as disgusting, and we realise relations between the two are far from good.
Indeed, one of the cleverest things about the play is how it brings out the animosity between the spouses, and indeed how each of the four basically has a big ego and finds it difficult to tolerate any of the others. Each of them comes across as hostile at one time or another to one or other of the four. Ninette, for instance, in a turning point of the action, loses all patience with her husband’s continual mobile calls, snatches the mobile and dumps it in the water of a vase of flowers.
Reza’s inventiveness in creating theatrically effective moments reaches its peak when Ninette, who is agitated and feeling a little unwell, suddenly vomits over the low table before her, drenching Veronica’s precious catalogue of a Kokoschka exhibition, thus enraging her and making her even less ready to reach compromises about the two sons.
When Michael brings out a bottle of good Scotch, matters are set for hard drinking, more furious exchanges and rash acts like the dumping of the mobile. The play ends, however, with the four seated in sullen and weary silence. Have they learned any lessons? Reza leaves the answer open.
Farrugia has found himself a very good cast, including Jes Camilleri, very welcome after a long absence abroad, as Alan. He and Ninette (Charlotte Grech) are both elegantly garbed and are shown by the direction to be socially superior to the Hilis (Kris Spiteri and Shirley Blake).
Michael is a businessman dealing in home fittings and has nothing of the polish – not to mention the coldness – of Alan.
But Veronica, though socially unsure of herself, has written a book on the painter Francis Bacon and, quite recently, one on the bloody conflict in Darfur, so she feels intellectually superior. She is, one can guess, a left-winger and shows how passionate she can get even on the small things of life that conflict with her ideology.
Blake makes her into a little spitfire when she loses her superficial deference towards the Riolos. Veronica is in a way the play’s key character, for she is the one who will not accept a compromise; Blake brings out this steeliness very well.
Camilleri’s Alan has all his emotions under great control and clearly has no remorse about advising the drug company not to let on about harmful side effects. He also appears to have a low opinion about women, and all in all he is the most unpleasant of the four. Camilleri’s performance is all of a piece. His Alan is a man to be feared. No wonder it is he who declares his belief in the “Alla tal-qirda” of the title.
As Michael, Spiteri is also very convincing. Physically he is the most active of the four, the readiest of the four to lose his temper and, like Veronica, he produces some great outbursts.
His attitude towards his wife, clearly very superior to him intellectually and culturally, not to mention towards defenceless animals, cannot win our approval. But the man is genuine in his beliefs and can clearly be an excellent drinking companion.
Grech’s Ninette is perhaps the character who changes most in the course of the encounter. Her expressions even early on signal the effort she is making not to lose her cool, and as Alan’s mobile rings for the umpteenth time, and Veronica gets on her moral high chair, her nervous stomach lets her down, producing the infamous throwing up.
If Veronica’s angry speeches form an indictment of the Riolos, Ninette’s vomiting may be seen as a protest against what she sees as the Hilis’ unreasonableness, and the mobile incident, which happens after she has drunk too much whisky, as an eloquent disapproval of the way her husband behaves and thinks.
Alla tal-Qirda gets a final performance today. It deserves to have a packed closing night.