Anyone coming across a Facebook page for one Dolores Boniface, described as Malta’s first female prime minister, may be forgiven for thinking they have missed an epochal leadership change.

For the past few days, ‘Dolores’ has been sharing with her small readership memories of her time in office, messages supposedly received from followers, and her own thoughts about the state of Malta today.

“Politicians get off-shore accounts to hide their corrupt earnings. They create fake banks and fake universities,” one such post reads. “And they know for sure that the other side will do exactly the same thing when they get into power.”

The fictional ‘Dolores’ is the creation of John Baraldi, a theatre director and writer, whose new play Apotheosis, to be staged in March at Spazju Kreattiv, explores the imaginary first female prime minister at the end of her career.

We’re an ancient people but so young as a nation

Alone in her home, a political outcast and under police protection due to the threats she constantly receives, she writes her tell-all memoirs which she hopes will shake the political establishment to its foundations.

Described as an exploration of contemporary Maltese political, social and feminist themes, Apotheosis, according to Mr Baraldi, questions what might happen if Malta were to get the prime minister it truly deserved.

The writer said the seeds for his play had been sown in a conversation over “how badly politics had served this country” and grew through research and interviews at the University of Malta about the country’s political history and the violence that has marked it along the way.

“Around that time, Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered, and the play, with a woman facing threats to her life because of her political views, started to feel a bit too close to reality,” Mr Baraldi said. “But eventually it felt like the time was right and there was enough distance from her death to handle it properly.”

So what do Apotheosis and Dolores Boniface have to say about Malta?

“This is a country of contradictions,” Mr Baraldi said. “This play is about that and, to a certain extent, about a postcolonial society which is still discovering itself. Dolores says at one point: we’re an ancient people but so young as a nation.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary for a nation to look at how they really are and how they have become the way they are.”