Lampedusa, written by award-winning British playwright Anders Lustgarten and being staged by Unifaun at St James Cavalier next week, is the heart-wrenching story behind the headlines of two strangers finding hope and connection where they least expect it

Anders Lustgarten’s powerful play Lampedusa contrasts the lives of a fisherman retrieving the bodies of refugees drowned at sea with a Syrian woman facing daily prejudice in the UK.

Through two interwoven monologues, Stefano (Mikhail Basmadjian) narrates his terrifying yet real stories. And in the bleakest corners of the UK, Denise (Pia Zammit) collects payday loans, witnessing crippling hardship and facing a barrage of complaints about immigration.

Lustagarten’s story pits the audience behind the headlines of two strangers finding hope and connection where they least expect it. Set in Lampedusa and the UK, the storyline echoes the sentiments felt in Malta... and beyond.

Lampedusa is the latest offering from maverick theatre company Unifaun, as part of the Spazju Kreattiv season. Unifaun are known to push the envelope and hit where it hurts most. Therefore it is no surprise to see them tackling an issue that is such a hot potato on the Maltese islands.

“What the internet has done,” comments producer Adrian Buckle, “is to give everyone the right to communicate their thoughts. Sometimes you agree with these posts, sometimes you don’t. But this is the age of the internet, so this reality is not going anywhere any time soon.

“We are staging this play because we want to create a mature dialogue on the subject; one that is informed and based on reason.

“Immigration is a big issue in Malta. There are those who want to help, others who prefer these foreigners to be sent away from Malta. This production addresses these issues and much more. We are not inviting the audience to listen to our views. We are presenting a situation. Then it is up to the audience to come up with its own conclusions.”

We are not inviting the audience to listen to our views. We are presenting a situation

Playwright Lustgarten is an activist, who has campaigned politically on different issues. He has written plays like Shrapnel, based on Turkey’s Roboski massacre and the post-Mugabe Zimbabwe Black Jesus.

Buckle comments that “what makes Lampedusa his best yet is that it links a subject of international importance to contemporary society. The play is called Lampedusa but it easily could have been called Malta. The realities, the bleakness, the mentality is all the same.”

Lustgarten achieves this through two interwoven monologues. One comes from Stefano, a former Italian fisherman who says that “the Med is dead” and who now earns a living salvaging the bodies of migrants who have died making the perilous boat journey from North Africa to Italy.

From left, play director Herman Grech, playwright Anders Lustgarten and producer Adrian Buckle

But Stefano’s terrifying story – and last year more than 3,500 refugees drowned in the Mediterranea Sea – is complemented by that of Denise. She is a mixed-race Syrian-British student who is financing her Leeds degree course by acting as a debt collector for a payday loan company. Forever an outsider in Britain, she claims the Syrians are “the last ones it’s OK to hate”.

The themes being tackled are poverty and desperation. Some might say nothing new here, but Lustgarten makes them a reality, not an abstraction. He has clearly done his homework. He writes with gripping precision about the fate of dead migrants as they drown in cold water. Handling their corpses, as Stefano graphically tells us, “is like oiled, lumpy rubbish bags sliding through your fingers”.

But Denise gives us an equally vivid account of how her 58-year-old sick mother is subjected to a work capability assessment, and how all the things people do to make a good impression, such as dressing well, are used as an excuse to deprive them of benefits.

Lustgarten draws instructive parallels between Stefano and Denise. Both are dealing with people in extremity. Both express the view that Europe is headed in the wrong direction. But, far from being a 65-minute litany of despair, Lustgarten’s play is about the survival of hope, with moments ofgenius comicity.

Stefano is befriended by a mechanic from Mali eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife; and, in her own crisis, Denise finds a sympathetic companion in a debt-ridden Portuguese single mother.

The play is being directed by Herman Grech with set design by Romualdo Moretti.

• Lampedusa is being staged at St James Cavalier in English on February 13, 14, 18, 20, 26 and 28 and in Maltese in a translation by Immanuel Mifsud on February 19, 21, 25 and 27. The performances on February 25-28 will be followed by a discussion with the playwright.

St James Cavalier and Unifaun will also be presenting an exhibition of photos taken by prominent artists in the field.

Tickets may be obtained online from www.unifauntheatre.com or by calling 2122 3200.