When I learnt that Theatre Anon was putting up a double bill for their 30th anniversary, I rushed online to purchase a ticket for Daqsxejn ta’ Requiem lil Leli, as I missed the chance to experience it back in 2018 during the Malta International Arts Festival.

Penned by Immanuel Mifsud, the story takes us through a journey down Leli’s memories up to his final breaths, accompanied by Kris Spiteri’s emotive composition and eight-piece live orchestra.

Chris Gatt co-directed the piece with Paul Portelli, who was also the storyteller, with Pierre Stafrace, Liliana Portelli, Sandra Mifsud, Douglas Comley and Jacob Piccinino as our performers and enablers of the protagonist, Leli, a human-sized wooden puppet.

Memories of carnival games and merry-go-round.

As I walked into the theatre, I was greeted by a tableau of trunks and wheels, with visuals of chapter titles rolling like a split-flap display projected onto the backdrop, and musicians tucked away in the background. At once, the cello’s melancholic hum resonated throughout the stalls and I was enraptured by the overture that ensued.

Out came our performers in a cacophony of murmurs and stage whispers, moving and shifting the tableau until a human-sized trunk was left onstage.

Opening the trunk, the five performers helped Leli gently out of his tomb, each action undertaken with precision and kindness towards the wooden elder as he wrestled with finding the strength to pull himself out of the chest. I found myself taking deep breaths with the puppet, feeling sensitive to Leli’s death rattle as the performers assisted him onto a wheelchair.

The performers assisted Leli onto a wheelchair.

This portrait of a dying man cradled by the performers painted a tapestry of pained memories while Portelli’s voice boomed at the final moments of Leli’s life: “Raġel qed tmut, x’int tistħajjel bħalissa?” (Dying man, what is it you dream of now?)

Pushing the narrative through Leli’s memories, Portelli accompanies our dying hero as each performer shifts into a cast of characters from Leli’s past, embodying Leli’s memories from his childhood in masks and puppetry.

The performers reenacted Leli’s memories of his parents, his sensuous teacher, his first love, the childish games and teasing he endured from his classmates, the carnival games and merry-go-round and his first love, Kristina.

The performers reenacted Leli’s memories.

Each chapter of his life was visited through every aspect of performance-making – the visuals projected on the backdrop reflected on the fleeting echoes of memories presented through Spiteri’s music commentary.

As time flew past, I felt my heart sinking deeper into my chest, fearing the inevitable end to Leli’s life, with white horses galloping around the merry-go-round of life at a faster pace than anyone would have hoped.

The five performers helped Leli gently out of his tomb.

Theatre Anon’s manifestation of the concept of the ephemerality of theatre and life flashing across your eyes laid juxtaposed with each note, movement, and minute detail within the mise-en-scene.

I cursed at my choice of seats at points throughout the performance because I lost some of the intricately detailed work done by the performers and puppeteers, sometimes losing sight of the musicians themselves and the projections due to the awkward sightlines, especially with such an intimate performance.

The play was full of detailed work done by the performers and puppeteers.

Nonetheless, Theatre Anon facilitated Leli’s passage from life to death, carrying the dying man across the river Styx into Death’s embrace. In his final moments, Leli makes peace with his time alive, and in a direct reference to Arnold Böcklin’s Die Toteninsel (1880), he is greeted by his loved ones at the shoreline of a life beyond.

In what I would deem as an optimistically nihilistic approach towards a great nothingness beyond death, Leli lay to rest in a wooden chest, comforted by the lasting memories brought to life once more on the national stage, while I left the theatre comforted that Leli’s memories lived on with me.