Theatre
Caravaggio
St James Cavalier
The life of great artists must, by virtue of their fine work, be good ground for analysis and investigation. It is often their backgrounds, their influences and their experiences which allow them to create such a strongly productive outpouring of emotion in their creative work.
Micallef succeeded in putting across the right changes in tone and attitude to express the varying nuances in all of the characters he portrayed in succession
This is precisely what scriptwriter Alfred Palma attempted to explore in his well-researched, original monologue, Caravaggio, interpreted by Mario Micallef for the Talenti Theatre Company earlier this month.
Palma’s well-constructed script had Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio recount his tale though minor commentary on his friends, acquaintances and mentors, allowing them to emerge as the main storytellers. They give their view of Caravaggio as he developed from boy to man and discuss the part they played in his rise to fame as a painter and his notoriety and downfall as a brawler, a Knight of the Order of St John, and a man fighting an irascible temper and childhood demons.
As an exercise in memory and characterisation, Micallef succeeded in putting across the right changes in tone and attitude to express the varying nuances in all of the characters he portrayed in succession. I particularly enjoyed his interpretation as the drunken knight – a fellow member of the Order of St John and quite a character.
He made the other, more sleazy though supposedly respectable characters like his mentor as a teenage painter and his patron as an established artist – a highly respected artist and a cardinal respectively – pale by comparison.
There was a clear drive in focus by Palma to concentrate on the more salacious and abusive aspects of Caravaggio’s turbulent life – from his childhood fights to his resistance to molestation as a young teenager and his colluding with the paedophilic cardinal later on in his career by pandering to his penchant for homoerotic themes.
Micallef’s portrayal of these perverted characters appeared wheedling and apologetic on the one hand and apparently resigned to their behaviour and acceptant of it in others. Somehow they coloured Caravaggio’s life in a manner which explained his motivations and frustrations as well as the dark thematic in his paintings.
What I found could have been done rather differently by director Żep Camilleri was the staging itself which was accompanied by Marlene Lanzon’s rather uninspiring lighting.
I understand that it was meant to keep the audience focused constantly on the actor and his portrayal of multiple characters. But the fact that it was a monologue coupled with the staging – where minimal props were used, along with standard spots and blackouts to signal changes from one character to the other – made the performance seem rather like an informative but rather dry documentary. I feel almost as though this piece would have worked much better on radio than on the stage.
The performance was successful in putting across many of the more interesting aspects of the painter’s life and was certainly a bravura performance by Micallef in terms of sheer memory and characterisation. However, much like the lighting, it focused too much on the chiaroscuro effect – the contrast between light and dark – while little taking into account the liminal shadows in between.