Like Zach Braff, best-known for his role in the TV comedy Scrubs, Malcolm Galea moves with ease between the worlds of acting, writing and directing. Now he’s playing the lead role in the first play penned by Braff.
Malcolm Galea is as comfortable on stage as he is off it; he has acted, written, directed, produced, stage managed and done backstage, which suggests he is comfortable pretty much anywhere around a stage. Or rather, he moves with ease between worlds.
So, it seems, does Zach Braff, the actor who plays the young doctor JD in the TV hospital comedy Scrubs. And now, Braff has penned his first play, All New People. Malcolm is playing the lead role, played by Braff himself in the play’s UK run.
Set in a deserted beach house on an island outside Manhattan, the play opens with Charlie, the protagonist, standing on a stool, clearly attempting suicide. He is interrupted by Emma, a real estate agent played by Jo Caruana, who calls a friend, her drug dealer, who also turns out to be a fireman.
Enter Thomas Camilleri. Eventually, they are joined by a young escort, played by Maxine Aquilina, who was sent by Charlie’s friend to cheer him up.
“The play is about these four unlikely characters, their stories, their dark secrets,” says Malcolm. “Eventually it unfolds into a microcosm of human relationships and how they interact.”
It was this interaction that first caught his eye about the script. He passed it on to Tony Bezzina from Masquerade, who picked a cast with the ability to pull it off.
Caruana requires no introduction to the Maltese stage; she was last seen in 12 Months of Funny at the Salesians Theatre, together with Camilleri, who worked in the UK before recently moving back to Malta. Aquilina is a young, up-and-coming actress last seen playing the Princess in the panto Pinocchio. And Galea himself is also fresh from writing and directing another panto, Merry Poppins.
He is, however, best-known for Porn: the Musical which, in 2009 was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before transferring to London in 2010. The show garnered positive reviews and in 2011 won the Off West-End Award for Best New Musical. The show returned to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year.
Galea is best-known for his roles in comedy – but with All New People there’s an underlying darkness.
“It’s all about being tangled in nothingness – you’re not sick – but still you’re stuck. All the characters are tangled; everyone in life has this big block. They’re not ‘real’ problems, but still they cripple you. It’s all about lonely people coming together but tackled in a very witty way, bringing out the absurdity of certain situations.”
The play is about these four unlikely characters, their stories, their dark secrets
The title is a reflection on the kind of people who have nothing to do, the Facebook generation, the ‘all new people’. Scrubs, the hospital comedy in which Braff played the young doctor JD for eight and a half years, was known for creating humour out of serious situations. Braff was nominated for one Emmy and three Golden Globes for his role as the young doctor JD and has directed several episodes of Scrubs. In 2004, he wrote, directed and starred in his first film, Garden State, a comedy drama about a man returning home after his mother’s death, which was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Braff also won a Grammy for the soundtrack.
For Braff, the play comes with a series of firsts: first play he’s ever written; first time he’s starred in his own play; first time he performed on stage in the UK.
For Galea, too, there’s at least one first: this will be the first time he’s playing a character that’s exactly his own age – 35. That Charlie should be on the brink of a deep depression, then, becomes a tad more poignant.
“Of course you end up comparing, you always do. In a way, you become that character. Even if you fall on stage, you react in character. You must wrap it around you. The audience can’t see you, if they see through the actor, then the bubble bursts. It’s quite a liberating experience.”
For Galea, the play is a focus on acting alone after a long spell of writing and directing. “It’s relaxing, a bit of a workout. My main profession is writing and everything I do in theatre is to make myself a better writer. So I like to explore all the facets of theatre. I write lines that I would like to portray.
“You get to explore different facets of yourself. In real life I don’t express emotion – maybe because theatre is such a great outlet. For me, drama belongs on stage.”
These days Galea has the luxury of being picky when it comes to acting. “I will only act in plays that I enjoy.”
In Malta, the standard of acting has become pretty high, he says, with drama schools beginning to bear fruit. Audiences, too, are becoming more discerning. “I always feel that you need to earn the audience’s attention. People’s spare time is so precious and if they choose to spend it on you, you have to make it worth their while.” With All New People, it seems, that much is guaranteed.
All New People runs at M Space between February 27 and March 1 and March 6 to 8.