Theatre
Ħarsa ta’ Kristu
St James Cavalier
This was not the first time that Carlos Farrugia and Joseph Galea have teamed up to produce a play for Easter.
The inspiration for this year’s work, Ħarsa ta’ Kristu, was the figure of the fratell, the hooded penitent (presumably male) who accompanies the Good Friday procession with chains bound to his feet.
As the play amply demonstrated, the fratell was a perfect metaphor for human existence. The two holes in the hood served as a convenient view-finder through which we can stealthily survey the world around us. At the same time, they disclosed our most vulnerable features.
The plot hinged on this metaphor, which author Galea stretched beyond credibility. If one watched the play as a kind of allegorical mystery play, however, then it was fine and actually good fun. The setting purported to be real enough.
Two young married couples meet on an Easter tour to Seville, which they discover is far from short of fratelli. For the first time in their lives, they get away from the traditional cosiness of Holy Week in Malta. Each one has a different reason for the escapade.
Both men dress up regularly as fratelli in Malta, but while Luca (Aaron Fenech) brags about it to all and sundry, Mark (Carlos Farrugia) is puzzlingly secretive. Luca’s wife, Pat (Lorianne Bugeja), holds a strange fascination with the idea of a fratell, which manifests itself in erotic nightmares. It also hides a terrible truth.
Mark’s wife, Sarah (Antonella Galea Loffreda), wants to understand her neurotic dread of fratelli which soon develops into an obsession. The four characters prey on each other’s private life and intimate secrets, a process that gradually strips them of their individual mask. With the scene shifting to Malta, the entangled mystery is unravelled during the following year’s Good Friday, with tragic consequences.
This was an entertaining piece of theatre
This was an entertaining piece of theatre. Nothing was pretentious, or even ambitious, but the interest never slackened. The actors did their bit sufficiently well. The rather controlled coquettishness of Bugeja contrasted nicely with the powerful presence of Galea Loffreda, who seemed to be able to cry real tears on the stage.
Fenech’s boisterous energy, although sometimes getting the better of him, complimented the low-key taciturnity of Farrugia.
The latter was the least effective of the players, but I am sure Farrugia would agree that it is never advisable to act in a play when you are also directing it.
The three fratelli (Stephan Bezzina, Steve Cilia, and Patrick Tanti) could have done with some voice training for more effectual utterances.
The short duration of the play was one of its merits. In a little over an hour, the full-house audience last Wednesday got its quota of troubled psychology, marital tension, religious comment, erotic hallucination, cultural elucidation, appalling strangulation and possibly more.
Rather than the Sevillean sonorous marchas, it was the mellifluous strains of Ivan Arapov’s Spanish guitar that provided the pleasant musical breaks, occasionally enhanced by the sensuous flamenco dancing of Marilyn Abela.