Unifaun Theatre Company, with the energy of Adrian Buckle and his team behind it, continues to provide us with challenging scripts and new and engaging productions. Their latest offering at St James Theatre was Howard Brenton’s controversial Paul, which explores the phenomenon of faith and provides audiences with an unflinching look at the life of St Paul. It was produced by Chris Gatt. Marie Benoît asked a handful of those who went to watch it for a brief comment

Actress Coryse Borg

The premise of this play is that the most well-known conversion in biblical history – when Saul became Paul on the road to Damascus – was actually a trick, and therefore all of Christianity is founded on a lie. I have no doubt that a number of people, some without even having watched the play, are reaching for their pen or keyboard to write a letter to the editor to complain about the subject matter of this play, using words such as “profane” and “blasphemous”. To be honest, before I watched the play last Saturday, I was expecting to be really shocked by Paul. However, although the subject itself may cause ripples, the theatrical production as produced by Unifaun, is nothing more than a well-written, well-acted, fictional piece which makes one think about it long after one has left the theatre. With a running time of nearly two hours, the play does sometimes get a little too heavy, however, there is thankfully an injection of humour courtesy of a short scene towards the end of the play, excellently acted I thought by Manuel Cauchi, Kevin Drake and, especially, Paul Portelli.

Tony Callus

We were on holiday from England and since we love theatre we went to see Paul at St James Cavalier Theatre in the round.

It was an excellent play and we would like to congratulate the producer and all the cast for a superb play and a special “well done” to Manuel Cauchi for the way he played Paul.

Graphic designer Joseph A. Borg

I’m an atheist, not agnostic, no half-baked libertine or a teenager looking for a cause. I’m 37 years old and 20 years ago I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to believe in fairy tales. Yet I want to thank my Catholic upbringing, with great role models that gave me a sense of belonging, of community.

I liked Paul, because it goes through an atheist’s travail: being sucked out of a community of faith by reason and trying to find a sense to life. I, like Brenton’s Paul, found solace in family and friends, in belonging to others, the sharing or the agape of early Christians. The play explores another possible interpretation of Paul’s life and I hope it would start engaging discussions between believers and atheists. I have a strong feeling that Brenton wants to portray the harassment received by the early Christians to the visceral distrust believers pour on atheists in general. A University of Minnesota survey found that atheists are distrusted more than Muslims and are a contributing factor to moral and cultural decline of America. I’m sure that the next news story will be that atheists eat children…

Actor / director Dominic Said

A great and intense play with enormous entertainment value, if one were to watch it with an open mind and maturity. Like the Da Vinci Code, it opens new frontiers of possibilities in our religious beliefs, but then why not? Unifaun Theatre has offered the mature and intellectual public a choice of great plays, of wit, of ingenuous playwrights and of outstanding performances.

Manuel Cauchi, in the title role was the tour de force of the play and he carried it with immense mastery of the tormented, sensitive and yet suffering Paul. This is, I believe, one of Manuel’s outstanding interpretations. I also enjoyed the performances of Kevin Drake and Paul Portelli’s last character: that of the powerful and creative gay. Great part and it takes guts to play a role like that, as in the case of Kevin Drake’s role, too.

Chris Gatt whose name is synonymous with good theatre, once again handled a delicate play with regard to detail. And lastly my congratulations to Adrian Buckle, the producer, for his choice of plays. Give us more, Adrian.

Actress Alexandra Camilleri Warne

Since we are living in the “Post-Da Vinci Code era” I can’t say that I found this play too shocking. Which is, I guess, just as well because rather than getting all consumed by the controversy of the themes portrayed I could focus my energy on the way in which the play was presented.

I enjoyed seeing the clever way in which the author adapted the biblical events in such a way that make you question whether they did happen in the way Howard Breton depicted them rather than the way Bible does: “Could it really have happened that way rather than the way we have been fed for the past two millennia?”

I think that we have reached a stage where we should move away from focusing on the trivial details about the life of Jesus such as whether he was married or not and more on his message. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the play was presented in flashbacks. This helped to concentrate more on what was going on. It was a long play. Almost two hours long with no break. I also liked the fact that the actors were dressed in clothes of today. This helped me associate how events that happened such a long time ago are still relevant today.

I admire a company like Unifaun for putting up controversial theatre. We need gutsy people like them to wake us up from our stupor and to challenge us to think.