Malta Arts Festival - Thoughts on Francis Ebejer

As you entered the beautiful baroque courtyard of the Auberge de Castille you couldn't help feeling somewhat bemused. Everywhere you looked - around you in the yard, up and down the corridors and along the overlooking range of balconies - there were men and women in Francis Ebejer dress mode: white suit, hint of colourful cravatte at the neck, summer trilby and the traditional palju (hand-held fan for males). The experience started before it actually got under way.

Għażiż Francis, publicly dubbed as a theatre project celebrating Malta's greatest modern playwright and author Francis Ebejer, captured a sizeable audience that certainly would have done with some Ebejeresque palji during yet another suffocating, scirocco-stifled evening. Once the production got going, however, a metaphorical breeze kicked itself out of the polished marble floor.

Pino Scicluna and Peter Busuttil strode onto the stage seemingly oblivious to the heat, maintaining an amazing barrage of Ebejer quotes, craftily mixed in with excerpts from modern Maltese history.

By the time they had gone through the whole process of dealing with their fellow actors on and off the stage as well as the public, their Ebejer costume had been reduced to a sweat-soaked ensemble that would have done easily well in a wet-t-shirt competition.

Peter Busuttil, also directing with Katlina June, warned us the production was not a biography of the man. He called it "a series of memories and thoughts" which, it can be cautiously said, still brought out the character and the undoubted charisma of Francis Ebejer. There were moments of sheer brilliance, particularly in the way Ebejer's books and plays were referred to against a background of noises, music and, well, more noises, but there were also instances when the project seemed destined to falter before it swiftly went back on track.

The effective use of actors strategically planted along the first-floor balcony row with its pigeon-view of the yard, gave the production the chance to fluctuate and to float without seeming lost or caught in a panic. Some voices, such as Manuel Cassar's, travelled down well to the audience, others were lost either at the mouth level of their sources or were simply swallowed up by the great bubble of heat that gradually but surely engulfed the whole venue like a relentless sun.

Ebejer was never an easy personality to portray and yet here we got him in multiples. Even as an author and playwright, he was the figurative tough nut to crack. Marco Galea, who researched, wrote and adapted Għażiż Francis, did an excellent job bringing it all back to us in good, racy Maltese, spiced up with understandable use and abuse of Ebejer's renowned bilingualism.

Ebejer's works mainly reflected the times he lived in, with particular and inevitable emphasis on World War II. Wars are, of nature, purely political. Għażiż Francis gave sporadic glimpses of political events and politicians to an interested audience. The history game was played upon these very glimpses which sometimes bordered on the subtly partisan, always a discomfort for actors, producers and directors anywhere in the world, before the so-called project was quickly salvaged from the jaws of hackneyed political standpoints and obsolete prejudices.

It is always a risky business trying to mix art with politics, as distinct from actual history. The artist rightly has this love-hate relationship with the politician and, perhaps not so rightly, vice-versa. The thing is they both know they have something of each other in them, and it often is a very disquieting truth to acknowledge. Għażiż Francis purposely provoked this situation, happily taking a bumpy ride on the time-honoured conundrum that it after all is.

This Ebejer experience, regrettably the only offering in Maltese on this year's Malta Arts Festival programme, was as intriguing as it was challenging. Hints of theatrical inconsistency, which occurred at various stages of the production, were incredibly made up for by a vibrant doggedness which had us glued to our seats. Or had the scirocco wind seen to that already?

It would be good to see other giants of Maltese literature and the theatre given tribute in this fashion. Dun Karm, Rużar Briffa, Ġużé Aquilina, Ġużé Diacono, Ġużé Chetcuti, Karmenu Vassallo, Anton Buttigieg... all of them names with good stories to tell, even in the Peter Busuttil way, but tell them please do. It would be an educational process and a unique way of reaching out to audiences who would otherwise have stayed home for some more globalised pre-packed culture on TV.