Stitiching’s place in Malta’s cultural canon has been assured ever since it was banned back in 2009, a ban which eventually paved the way for the change in Malta’s censorship laws. And yet through it all I couldn’t help but wonder; what originally sparked that harsh ban 10 years ago?

In his foreward, playwright Anthony Neilson makes a plea to everyone present to “see the play for what it is, unburdened by the notoriety thrust so idiotically upon it”.

The play, he says, “was intended to challenge, not offend. It’s meaning for me lies not in its violence but in its last, fragile moment of hope, when every path is possible”.

I would like to put forward that plea myself. It is not a play you go to watch for a good time. I would never put myself in a position to call it enjoyable or fun. It is one of those works that puts you face to face with a stark, harsh reality of a couple that are doing their best to salvage what is left of their broken life. They are trying to keep the embers of a love burning after it was torn away from them in any way possible, some may say, in all the wrong ways.

I found myself in disagreement with Unifaun producer Adrian Buckle’s foreward where he says that the play could easily be called Love never dies.

Granted, it is a play about love; a love lost, difficult to regain. But, I found that the more the two stumbled ahead in good faith, and the harder they tried, the more they drifted away from each other. And, ultimately, their love has been torn, irreparably.

Although all types of theatre elicit different emotions and reactions from different audience members, I have never experienced it quite as starkly as I did with Stitching.

I watched on in horror as, directed by Chris Gatt, the two central characters screamed in each other’s faces, accusing one another of adultery and suggesting infantile kidnapping and murder at each other.

An interesting premise that will undoubtedly stand the test of time

Another audience member sitting right opposite me appeared to be in hysterics – possibly nervously laughing through parts which were making them uncomfortable, but chuckling nonetheless.

In short, Stitching is the story of a husband and wife, Stu and Abby who are using sex and role play as a way to try and reconnect after a tragedy has torn them apart.

Sex becomes their currency, their language and their lifeline. It becomes the only way that they can reconnect and be with one another. The violence in their relationship escalates as they roll around on the floor with a plastic phallus almost stabbing at each other.

There is nothing playful about this scene. These shenanigans are not the product of young love, these are the games of two people who are releasing guilt and grief on each other. With Stu becoming more invested in their parallel world, he becomes more aggressive, more physically demanding, bringing Abby printouts of graphic, sado-masochistic, sometimes mutilating images. “Found your limits have we?” he sneers at her as he chucks the final image that leads to one of the play’s significant moments.

The narrative unfolds non-chronologically, with scenes jumping forward to various points in the future; between the couple deciding on a way forward, and them fully invested in their sexual role play. The play needed more in-between scenes, as it felt like it went from zero to 100 in a few seconds within the same scene. Tensions run high, but there is no tenderness. The air of desperation pervades every corner of their lives. Even in their made-up sexual fantasy, posing Abby as a prostitute and Stu as her client, things are not all they seem with a feeling that Abby is still finding it hard to live up to her husband’s expectations.

Although the play was originally written for younger actors, as Buckle notes in his foreword, in truth the roles are more suited to older actors. Abby is a woman who is facing a time when she can no longer have children. Stu is a man who is coming face to face with his amoral and disturbing sexual past. Had younger actors been cast, the urgency and anger at these situations may have not been so graphic or biting.

Pia Zammit and Mikhail Basmadjian open the play, with a silence, a silence, it seemed, more deafening than any of their screams of pain later on in the play.

The accomplishments of these two actors speak for themselves. However, while the two ended the performance with tell-tale scratches and carpet burns all over their bodies, their performances needed more anger, more grief, more of that feeling that would make the audience members empathise at the end, rather than judge them for their choices.

Although Stitching presents an interesting premise that will undoubtedly stand the test of time, it is let down by tone and pacing issues that make it feel outdated at times. With easy access to all types of pornography and media reporting tragedies in minute detail, the shock value within the play has been lost, and it increasingly feels like the playwright’s fear that the play’s notoriety will overshadow it, will become a reality.