Mario Micallef in his rendering of the life of St Paul in Sawl.

Talenti Theatre Company is no stranger to focusing on specific historic individuals and adapting their story to theatrical performances. Commissioning original dramatic monologues to Mario Micallef’s great ability in single-handedly delivering the narrative of a person’s most important moments with the required sensitivity is a tried-and-tested method which always has positive results.

Sawl – Alfred Palma’s script recounting highlights of the life of St Paul – was staged last weekend at St James Cavalier. Directed by Żep Camilleri, the hour-long monologue was an eloquent and poised account in the first person. The unified, flowing script also exposed the beauty of the Maltese language as a vehicle for the sadly disappearing art of public oration.

Thanks to Micallef’s steady delivery and ability to engage with an audience at such length, changing his tonality to express the character’s changing emotional state, the piece was successful because it didn’t falter. While the rhythm changed, the consistency was there and, coupled with Micallef’s prodigious memory, made it an excellent performance in oratory skill.

I wasn’t quite impressed by the lighting, atmo-spheric as it was, because one of the spotlights happened to be angled directly at the audience and had a blinding effect on certain people, detracting from their attention.

Micallef and Camilleri’s joint effort as actor and director respectively did transform this monologue from falling into the trap of becoming an instructive religious tract, and humanised the character of the saint to the point where his simple and direct address to the audience and his gratitude to the people of Malta appeared genuine and almost endearing.

The piece presented St Paul as a man who took matters seriously – almost to the extreme – and the character criticised his own fundamentalist attitude, raising awareness that too much ardour can lead to despair, which is why God’s grace is the saving force which guides us to calmer shores: as it did when it brought him to our island in AD60.

As an honest, historically-researched account of the saint’s life, the monologue could also be considered a piece of oral interpretation and analysis of dry historical documents, breathing some much-needed life and humanity into them.

As a stand-alone one-man show, Micallef’s performance bypassed the showy and theatrical for the subtle and the erudite, making for a calming and highly-interesting theatrical performance.

• Sawl is also being staged at the collegiate parish church of St Paul’s Shipwreck, Valletta, tomorrow at 7pm.