If You Hated Shakespeare At School, There’s Still Hope For Enjoying His Plays In Malta
Many Maltese people’s memory of Shakespeare’s plays revolve around slow afternoons spent staring at the teacher, barely registering half the old English being uttered. Now, a theatre company called wants to change all of that, and they’re hoping to do it through Shakespeare At The Pub.
This is the second year for the company, What’s Their Names Theatre, and they’re back for more after 2016’s successful experiment with their Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Pub. “We had just five actors playing some 20 roles,” said director Philip Leone Ganado. “We served drinks during the show, played modern music and tried to make is as fun and silly as we could. People loved it: we sold out our limited seats in a couple of weeks and had a waiting list of over 100 people.”
This year, they’re doing it all again with a new play, Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s funniest comedies. The play seems to be heading in the same direction as last year’s, but Philip has got some amazing tricks up his sleeve. “This is the opposite of the big-speeches-and-men-in-tights Shakespeare people read in school. We’ll have actors handing the audience beer during the show, live music, and the emphasis is really on the story and the jokes, not on how great the actors sound.”
With a great cast including Joe Azzopardi, Joseph Zammit, Becky Camilleri, Joanna Wills and Nathan Brimmer (who also happens to be the be the actual landlord of The Pub) it promises to be an awesome night.
To make sure this year’s performance does not sell out as fast, WTN will be performing nine times between 23rd April and 3rd May. A few nights are already fully booked, but there’s still some seats available for the other days. WTN have also included three Shakespeare for Breakfast shows this year, replacing beer with coffee and sandwiches. Tickets for the show in Valletta can be bought from The Pub itself, and can also be reserved by sending an email to [email protected] or calling 77345207.
“Basically, while I can’t guarantee it’s the best play anyone’s ever seen, I can guarantee there’s nothing else like it happening this year,” Philip concluded.
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