Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1031063
4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 SEPTEMBER 2018 THIS WEEK THEATRE GENERALLY speaking, gestation pe- riods are the best thing that can hap- pen to an artistic project. The rush for immediate gratification – so toxically enabled by our social-media-and-list- sicle culture – is entirely inimical to a healthy creative process, which can only benefit from an extended process of rumination and the outset and some considered polish at the other end. It becomes doubly urgent in the local con- text, where the tendency to churn out something for the sake of churning it out is enabled by the low-stakes game that is our cultural scene. In other words, it's hard to make a living at it and even harder for it all to have an impact beyond our shores. As a result, the status quo ends up be- ing populated by half-baked projects which never quite reach their full po- tential, to the detriment of all involved. Add to that toxic brew a quality-over- quantity happy Capital of Culture drive (which directly matches the country's own overdevelopment drive in heed- less expansion against all odds, audi- ence oversaturation being one of them) and you're left with a diluted scene all round. Well, Stitching was all but forced into an extended gestation period, and this is just about the only silver lining on the horizon for Unifaun Theatre's produc- tion of the Anthony Nielson two-hand- er starring Pia Zammit and Mikhail Basmadjian, which was performed in Scotland with a '14' rating but was banned in Malta in what led to an over- turning of the local censorship laws. I'm not privy to just how many rehearsal hours were put in by the two actors during the legal-moralistic saga that the show has been enmeshed in since 2009 – along with Alex Vella Gera's 'Li Tkisser Sewwi' debacle, Stitching was the other cause celebre that led to the overhaul of censorship laws in Malta – but it would be fair to assume that the prolific local actors have at least been mentally inhabiting the roles of frayed couple Stewart (Basmadjian) and Abby (Zammit) for quite some time. And it shows. Now that Stitching has finally been given a shot at being performed - produced by Unifaun Theatre's long- suffering producer Adrian Buckle and directed by Chris Gatt at the Teatru Manoel Studio Theatre in Valletta – what we saw on the Wednesday show was a fully fleshed out performance de- tailing the disintegration of a relation- ship in notes both harsh and tender but, as is ever the case with legitimate forms of art, entirely true. The premise is simple, and though the trajectory of Nielson's play is delib- erately labyrinthine at times, the very same simplicity helps to maintain nar- rative coherence and emotional reso- nance throughout. Abby and Stewart aren't sure their relationship is going to work out, and when the prospect of a baby pops in- to the equation, this tips their psyches over into a whole other can of worms; one laced with both neuroses and, per- haps, the prospect of a welcome fresh start. But when tragedy strikes, we see the cracks of their relationship develop into nasty shards. And while this certainly leads to some unsavoury verbal sparring – with the spectre of domestic violence lurking uneasily over at least a couple of Abby and Stewart's altercations – the ban placed upon the play can finally be re- vealed for the sham that it was. Indeed, the performance we saw – and which the authorities refused to watch, deem- ing the script to be necessary enough evidence to stop the production from being staged – was a hard-to-swallow but nonetheless entirely compassionate treatment of just how nuclear intimate tragedy can be for the people involved. If anything, the setup brings to mind Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009), though even then, it is thankfully shorn The once-banned Stitching certainly doesn't live up to the shock factor suggested by the censors, but it remains an emotionally resonant exploration of grief, TEODOR RELJIC finds When the seams bleed Mikhail Basmadjian and Pia Zammit are at the top of their game in the long-gestating Stitching, a cause celebre of Malta's battle against censorship