'The Sunday Times' May 4, 2003

A wilderness of monkeys

Review by Paul Xuereb

... Cornelia Crombholz has turned out a strong, tight production that develops from the deceptively playful opening through the rapidly increasing horrors of Act One, counterpointed with the lightly comic scenes between Howard and Pam and the insensitive behaviour of Howard towards Phyllis when Bishop was born. The props of sheared-off limbs are stomach-turningly realistic, but the acme of horror is reached when the baby Bishop of a flashback becomes the baby from the plane that Bishop is eating.

Alan Paris and Irene Christ play excellently off each other. Christ's Phyllis sinks from elegant and somewhat flippant woman into a neurotic and desperate creature all too ready to succumb to Paris's feral, foul-mouthed son, a great change from the stuttering and unsure schoolboy of the opening scene. These two actors give performances of great power, and on occasion of much subtlety, both in this act and in the remainder of the play where the bestiality of Bishop is unleashed on civilization and Phyllis's psychological isolation grows greater and more pitiful.

In Act One Mercieca changes effortlessly from the callousness and selfishness of his scenes with Phyllis to the sensuality and sexual obsession of those with Pam, a vaguely delineated part that Pia Zammit partly man ages to make convincing. As the schizophrenic but cheerful Popo Martin, Zammit provides a good contrast with Pam.