Though Children of a Lesser God (put up at Blue Box, Msida, by Theatrencore) is often spoken about as a unique love story, there are deeper forces at work than a basic ‘boy-meets-girl’ in the award-winning script by Mark Medoff.
Telling the story of a speech instructor who falls in love with his deaf student, the play deals with the essence of human communication and the struggle to find personal identity in an exclusionary society.
As the ‘pure deaf’ Sarah Norman, Sharon Bezzina gives a touchingly emotional performance while never speaking a word aloud.
Her lines are delivered entirely through convincingly fluent sign language and emphatic facial expressions.
Flinging herself frantically through scene after scene with endless energy, Bezzina’s Sarah is an angry, yet vivacious, character who does not want to conform to the hearing world’s expectations.
Opposite her, Charles Sammut’s James Leeds is the force that grounds the play; he is deliberate and steady, where Bezzina is full of chaotic energy.
Throughout their relationship, Leeds finds himself acting as his wife’s interpreter to the world and, in much the same way, he is her interpreter to the audience.
Heartfelt and heartbreaking, addresses issues not often seen in Maltese theatre
This is the true challenge of the play, with Sammut delivering not just his own lines, but deciphering Bezzina’s quick-fire sign language for the benefit of the hearing audience.
Serving as the lynchpin to bring whole scenes together in this way is certainly a tiring role, but Sammut pulled it off remarkably well.
He displayed the warmth and patience of a career educator and served as a steady foil to temper Bezzina’s prickly, spirited performance.
As a couple in a relationship, Bezzina and Sammut only really come into their own during the second act, by which time the characters are married.
While I found it easy to believe the pair as long-term partners, the first act suffered slightly from a lack of romantic chemistry between the two leads. By the time the second act rolled around, the level of comfort and trust displayed by both actors cemented the relationship as a long-term love, even if the initial romantic scenes were a little more fizzle than spark.
When Sarah’s childhood friend Orin (Joseph Zammit) recruits her to his cause as an activist for deaf rights, cracks begin to appear in the marriage.
Zammit’s performance as the would-be revolutionary was strong throughout and his fluent sign language argument with Bezzina’s frustrated Sarah was a brilliant emotional exchange, despite the fact that neither actor spoke a word out loud.
As school supervisor Mr Franklin, Renato Dimech is every bit the authoritarian headmasterly type we all recall from our school days, while also serving as the amusingly pompous source of a few of the play’s lighter moments.
Helping to fill out the emotional core of the play, Monica Attard is Sarah’s estranged mother, the sad portrait of a woman who has given up trying to understand the strange world her deaf child inhabits.
Mariella Sammut gives an animated performance as Lydia, a promiscuous student at the school whose crush on James causes tension. Rounding out the cast is Alexandra Camilleri Warne, whose bubbly Ms. Kline is well-meaning but ultimately condescending – a biting criticism of the treatment of the deaf by mainstream society.
Aside from the familiar scent of fog machines, I don’t think my sense of smell has ever been engaged in a theatre, so director Tyrone Grima’s cunning use of scent as part of the storytelling technique was refreshingly innovative.
Unfortunately, not all elements of the play’s unusual sensory input worked quite as well as this one. In order to play with the audience’s sense of sight, Grima opted for some unusual choices with his lighting. At several points, I found myself thinking more about the lighting than the characters, particularly during one short scene which was performed with a red spotlight flashing on and off over the actors.
While the use of scent helped to immerse the audience fully into the play, some of the lighting choices were jarring to the point of distraction. Heartfelt and heartbreaking, Children of a Lesser God addresses issues – and an audience – not often seen in Maltese theatre and in that respect I certainly hope it won’t be the last of its kind.