Theatre
Sibna ż-Żejt
Manoel Theatre

When you’re living a political situation which sometimes verges on the ridiculous, having the orchestrators of this predicament lampooned and satirised alleviates the rising sense of disdain and outrage you may have begun to feel.

When this same humour is used to throw the imperfections of a failing system under greater, if somewhat simplified scrutiny, awareness is also raised as to the dangers within that system. New playwright Wayne Flask’s debut script, Sibna ż-Żejt, picked up by Staġun Teatru Malti and directed by Sean Buhagiar, runs in that vein of dark humour inspired by Italian satirists, who know a thing or two about political ridicule.

The premise with Sibna ż-Żejt was straightforward enough. It was set in Malta in the not-so-distant future when electronic monitoring controls every part of our life and influences most of the population into being mindless drones in a Brave New World kind of way.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat (Mario Micallef) has managed to use the propaganda machine that is the media to help keep him in office, while simultaneously juggling his uneasy relationship with ruthless contractors and land developers – whose headquarters were depicted as a kind of comic-book villains’ lair – and the remnants of the Catholic Church, which is still trying to claw its grasp on to the State, while being generally rejected by a growing number of people in favour of Gordon Manché’s River of Lies sect.

Micallef’s version of Muscat as a sufficiently self-centred but rather ineffectual megalomaniac who relied on his adviser Keith Schembri, played by a dryly funny Simon Curmi, was an adequate version of Malta’s Yes, Prime Minister, with none of the Eddington-Hawthorne magic however.

The major flaw with the script was in its editing: there was plenty which could have been cut and simplified, making for a cleaner, tighter piece rather than the overly verbose speeches there were in the second act, which were meant to show the pedantic and mercenary side of local politics but came across as rather forced.

What I did like was the directorial idea of having the actors playing the nefarious contractors – who, let’s face it, are the actual rulers of the godforsaken rock thanks to the ineffectual policing and internal corruption of countless governments, to also play the members of the clergy representing the Church faction of state influence.

Gilbert Formosa’s sleazy and rather stupid Sandro Chetcuti and his mediatory Fr Joe were well-rounded; while Antonella Axisa and Edmond Vassallo played money-grubbing twins Shane and Shana Mizzi who inherited daddy’s money and squandered it.

While technically good, the piece failed to put across its message succinctly, which is, after all, the aim of good satire

I found both rather ineffectual and aggravating with Axisa being rather too shrill in her interpretation and certainly liked them much more in their incarnations as the polite and courteous Fr Mark and the token nun il-Madre at the Curia, where their interpretations were much more enjoyable.

The bishop, played by Peter Busuttil and the acerbic bigoted and conservative Fr Luigino, played by Jesmond Triccas, completed the religious group worried about the discovery of oil beneath the Addorlorata Cemetery – which the contractors want for themselves.

As evil dopplegangers, Busuttil’s Jonathan Cachia Obermaier and Triccas’s Charles Dei Vassalli Polidano made as good an impact as their supposedly saintly counterparts and gave enjoyable performances.

The media was represented by the rather useless John Amaira, allegedly Ruth Amaira’s son, played well by Gabriel Aquilina; the enigmatic presenter Scavenger played by a cheesy Luke Dalli, whose investigative programme is a lighter version of Stephen Grech’s (Ronald Briffa); the latter questioning the prime minister about the discovery of oil in a less-than-hard-hitting manner.

Meanwhile, JP Busuttil did his usual and rather effective panto dame number to send up Gordon John Manché, who seems to have taken over from Peppi Azzopardi as the moronic manipulator of the masses with his Gay or No Gay game show.

Joe Public is represented by the Chinese flower seller turned ‘position of trust’ holder and later spy, Ying Ping (Kris Spiteri) for having been given information regarding the oil beneath the rotting bones of half of Malta’s ancestors, while the three Micallef brothers Rokku (Clive Piscopo), Ċisju (Manuel Cassar) and the exiled family black sheep, the intellectual artist (Sean Briffa), portrayed three versions of Maltese mentality.

Spiteri’s Ying Ping was funny in his deadpan manner, as were Piscopo and Cassar as stereotypical uncultured oafs, who believe all they are told and communicate in grunts and monosyllables.

Briffa, on the other hand, was enigmatic as the failed and under-represented intellectual class, whose protests and ideas about improving the democratic system are quashed by the ironic but very real existence of socialist-capitalism.

Andy Catania played Calafato, a sleazy, racist drug-pushing pimp who represented the underlying criminal element in our society and who ultimately triumphed over all other systems in an odd coup which left me feeling rather baffled.

While Buhagiar’s treatment of the piece made good use of technology and special effects, as well as relying on the audience’s expectations of political satire, it couldn’t stop the piece from appearing stretched. The unusually large cast, which is becoming typical of Staġun Teatru Malti’s productions, contributed to this setback.

While technically good, the piece failed to put across its message succinctly and elegantly, which is, after all, the aim of good satire.

• Sibna ż-Żejt is again being staged at the Manoel Theatre tomorrow, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8pm. There will be a matinee performance at 3pm on Sunday.