Censorship more religious than moral

I was invited to watch a rehearsal of Anthony Neilson's play Stitching, banned by the board of censors.

The play is indeed absorbing, sometimes harrowing and mainly deals with the disparity of a young couple caught in an all too familiar predicament of deciding the fate of an unborn child.

The only disturbing moments are scenes when the author delves into a fine line between love and violence; love in the form of the dialogue used, violence in the imagined and achieved through sexual fantasies. An all too familiar issue of how some sections of society live with domestic abuse.

To some, Stitching has a crass lack of taste, to others an enigmatic dramaturgy that is never boring.

Is Stitching a play that should be banned? Absolutely not! Can anyone pass judgment, impose a ban based on reading the screenplay? (Unless you are in the same league as Kane, Pinter or Ravenhill). Absolutely not! I am baffled how Peppi Azzopardi disseminated the script to a newscaster, a priest and a cross between Mary Whitehouse and Aunt Agony to grace us good folks of Malta with their expertise (or lack of it) on such a cryptic screenplay.

Censorship in Malta is more religious than moral, stemming from two centuries of Christendom. How else would film censors award The Passion of the Christ a 12 rating and the forthcoming comedy play Allo Allo (soon to be staged at the Manoel Theatre) a 14 rating just because Herr Flick refers to a painting of "The fallen Madonna with the big boobies"?

Catholic Jihad in Europe is long gone, sailed away with the Turkish Armada when Constantinople decided against turning the Mediterranean into a Turkish lake, our faith forever preserved.

How some of us haven't realised this is a mystery.