Stefano (Mikhail Basmadjian) reflects on the migrant situation while Denise (Pia Zammit) experiences racism in the background. Photo: Christine Joan Muscat-Azzopardi

Theatre
Lampedusa
St James Cavalier

Indifference and complacency have led the vast majority of us to set aside our humanity in the face of a very real, terrifying ordeal which sees its victims at the mercy of both the harshness of the elements and the unrelenting prejudice of people.

Anders Lustgarten’s script for Lampedusa, produced by Unifaun Theatre and currently running at St James Cavalier, examines the migrant crisis which is affecting Europe as millions of people make the treacherous journey across the “blue desert” of the Mediterranean Sea.

It is an expanse of water whose vastness obliterates, swallowing its victims by the boatload, oblivious to age, race and gender. Interestingly, for this performance, the two narrators, who engage the audience in a direct address, were not migrants themselves, at least not in the commonly accepted meaning of the term, but people who deal with them on a close, personal level.

Mikhail Basmadjian played a Lampedusan fisherman whose secondary job of ‘fishing out’ dead migrants’ bodies from the sea with his friend Salvo, pays better than his dwindling primary job. He becomes an emotional migrant – forever displaced in his attempt at understanding the motivation behind the migrants’ choice to travel the treacherous waters, while struggling to come to terms with the changing bigoted attitudes of his fellow Lampedusans and the larger European audience.

His anger at the islanders’ abandonment by the authorities and the EU, is evident, but his kindness and humanity equal this in their pity and horror of what the poor people he attempts to rescue, experience as they float towards perceived safety and freedom on a rickety boat, exploited by traffickers and terrorised by the elements.

From indifference to solidarity, he struggles with his own post-traumatic stress disorder after seeing so many scenes of death – breaking down in front of the audience and admitting to the nightmares where he sees all those poor, lost souls, after having appeared impervious to the horror of the dead at the start of the play, factually listing and describing the different types of corpse he deals with almost on the daily.

Lampedusa is a play to watch, because it is not only about awareness, but about humanity, about solidarity and above all, hope

Intercutting the fisherman’s story in Lampedusa is the story of a British-Muslim woman, who was born and bred in the UK, but suffers from the injustices levelled towards immigrants, while, ironically feeling guilty for perpetrating injustices upon others herself.

Pia Zammit sensitively plays a half-English, half-Muslim single woman from Leeds, who is a cultural migrant, straddling two cultures and two religions, getting abuse from both.

Her job as a loans collector to subsidise her Open University politics degree leads her to meet immigrants from a diverse number of countries as well as a considerable amount of prejudiced out-of-work yobs who swear and spit at her.

She has to deal with her ageing and disabled mother’s benefits claims and later her death, exposing the terrible cracks in British society and highlighting the class-divide. She feels displaced is in a country where her headscarf makes her stand out and her accent makes her fit in, where she has a strong work ethic and a ruthless manner in the execution of her job, votes Tory and yet feels terrible for having to force a poor old woman to pay her dues.

Both actors are supported by Romualdo Moretti’s minimal set – an outcrop of rock by the beach – and Chris Gatt’s tonal lighting, which set the mood very well. While Basmadjian’s interpretation was a touch more empathic and impassioned than Zammit’s, and could have done with a shade more of softening, it was a strong performance and a credit both to him and director Herman Grech, who, as a journalist, has very personal experience in dealing with this topic and whose influence could be clearly felt.

Zammit excelled in her role and gave a nuanced performance which infused pathos with a good dose of humour and made her character credible and instantly likeable. Interestingly, it was these two characters’ growing friendships with the immigrants they dealt with – a boat mechanic from Mali in Lampedusa and a Portuguese single mother in Leeds – which redeemed their humanity and drove home to the audience that our strengths lie in our ability to find similarities beyond our differences and make significant social connections which are mutually beneficial by redeeming our better qualities and mitigating our cynicism.

This is why Lampedusa is a play to watch – it is not only about awareness but about humanity, about solidarity and, above all, hope.