Theatre
B’Sogħba Kbira
Sagrestija Vault, Valletta Waterfront

It is not uncommon for families to have their own eccentricities and idiosyncratic dynamics, with rituals and attitudes which we take with different members of our extended clan.

Simon Bartolo’s latest play, B’Sogħba Kbira, currently running at Sagrestija Vault, at the Waterfront in Valletta, features a very odd family and looks at how they all interact as a dysfunctional set of siblings, displaying an array of stock characteristics which are more common in Malta than we care to admit.

The five Ciappara siblings take rivalry to a new level of passive aggression. The play opens with Graziella (Alison Abela) lamenting the death of her dog and in doing so, confirming a rather sad situation: that some people are more interested in the welfare of animals than that of other human beings – including close family.

A visit by her twin brother, Grezzju (Gilbert Formosa) confirms the worst – that their mother has passed away, she behaves in a penitent manner only until her greed for her mother’s will becomes apparent. The twins then go first to their two older sisters, Dorotea (Olivia-Ann Marmarà) and Diana (Mandy Mifsud), with Graziella’s long suffering husband Mario (David Scicluna Giusti) in tow, and finally, to their crazy sister Tessie the ninja warrior conspiracy theorist played by Louise Fenech.

In spite of the oddity the audience is presented with, B’Sogħba Kbira does not fail to entertain and engage

What is interesting was that Bartolo wove this simple story of greed for money into a fantasy which linked to the backstory of his Fiddien trilogy, co-written with Lorraine Vella.

The siblings all seem to transform, at least for a little while, into the slaves of the silver-loving tyrant in the Vella-Bartolo story and their mother happens to leave a very unusual sort of diary, not unlike Tom Riddle’s in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. More than anything, the play focused on the five characters who were larger than life embodiments of some of our country’s most typical and often endearingly irritating traits – from pretentious and over-the-top people too self-absorbed to think of anyone other than themselves, to overly-cautious, religious, celibate men, to opportunistic tricksters and pious old ladies.

I particularly enjoyed Marmarà and Mifsud’s Dorotea and Diana – crotchety, insular, stubborn old women who are nonetheless not as religious as they appear when they are faced with the dilemma of looking for their inheritance.  Abela’s Graziella was a caricature of several irritating traits which Maltese women seem to have honed to perfection, and was thus an ideal figure of ridicule.

The waspishly serious and rather unnerving Tessie as portrayed by Fenech completes this rather crazy group in a role which cleverly focuses on the risible intensity that stereotypes like her exude.

Scicluna Giusti’s Mario and Formosa’s Grezzju were equally funny as gauche, obtuse men with little by way of social skills.

Director Roderick Vassallo made good use of the little space available at the Sagrestija Vault and helped his cast move back and forth from funeral to fun to freak-show over the course of 75 minutes.

As an exposition of character, the play is well-executed and has some moments of strong comic timing. In spite of the oddity the audience is presented with, B’Sogħba Kbira does not fail to entertain and engage.

■ B’Sogħba Kbira will be staged at Sagrestija Vault tomorrow and Saturday at 8.30pm and Sunday at 5.30pm.