Margerita Pulè follows the story of Zayden, a young homeless man who struggles to build a life in an indifferent world

There couldn’t be a starker contrast between the revellers on Strait Street, and the bleak figure of Zayden trying to keep his life falling apart inside The Splendid. Outside, the bars are packed, but inside, against a backdrop of peeling paint and crumbling stone, Jacob Piccinino gives a physically heroic performance, showing us how easily a life can slip out of control and through the cracks, and how vulnerable man is to a universe that conspires against him.

An estimated 300 people are currently homeless in Malta, either sleeping in temporary accommodation, abandoned housing or in cars. Zayden, played by Piccinino, is just one of them; an unstable home life leaves him ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that life throws at him, and he is unable to hold down a job, or live easily with others, and finds his life spiralling out of control. Malta, with its economy-on-steroids, is outrunning and outpricing the more vulnerable in society, leaving them – like Zayden – to navigate their own perilous paths through life.

Deep down, Zayden wants what we all want – his family around him on his birthday, someone to love him, somewhere to live and some spending money, not necessarily in that order. But his family is dysfunctional and each encounter with them leaves him emotionally weak as he struggles to rise above the chaos they have bequeathed him. His wages – when he manages to find work – are measly compared to the cost of rent, and eventually his homelessness leaves him unable to keep the very job that gives him a semblance of stability. Those things that we take for granted – a family support-system, an education, a family home – are not there for Zayden, and he feels each knock all the harder for it.

Society’s failures are clear

Piccinino starts out perhaps a little too clean for a homeless boy (with a nice white shirt and clean, fluffy hair), but his intense monologue soon turns him into a sweaty and desperate Zayden, clinging to the little love that life offers him, holding on to memories of happier times just to make it through the night. He circles the audience, hangs washing on a line and acts out scenes with the police, his family and even a bicycle thief so convincingly that you expect them to appear any minute in the space he carves for them in the air in front of you. His mobile phone and radio accompany him through the night – his mother phones him to ask for money, he evades a call from his social worker, he dances to bad music in a bar and sings along to Radju Malta.

Jacob Piccinino in Zayden

The script is at times a little simplistic and risks falling into cliché; in the real world as in fiction, not all policemen are bad, and not all Salesian Brothers are elderly do-gooders. You have only to read Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, with its multilayered and chaotic homelessness or even see the complex socio-political works by Mikhail Karikis and Almagul Menlibayeva in This Land is Your Land at Valletta Contemporary at the moment to understand that the road to disenfranchisement and social isolation is not always a linear path leading from A to Z – from domestic violence to homelessness.

But society’s failures are clear; with a difficult start in life, Zayden is judged and rejected – until even his girlfriend tells him she needs someone better than him. Writer and director Tyrone Grima was moved to write the piece in response to the plight of one young man in particular who sought help from the Salesians of Don Bosco where Grima works. And what Zayden’s character may lack in depth, Piccinino’s intensely physical performance makes up for, and lends him a credibility he might not otherwise have.

All this is irrelevant, no doubt, to the real-life Zayden on whom the performance is based. We are left at the end of the performance not knowing what will become of him – he walks out not even knowing himself. It’s a bleak and poignant ending; despite attempts at rehabilitation, Zayden seems unable to live a stable life for long. I wish him well wherever he is – may he rise above the bad cards that life has dealt him, and may he somehow find a path to a better life for himself.

Zayden, written and directed by Tyrone Grima, and performed by Jacob Piccinino was on at The Splendid in Valletta from July 25 to 28 and was produced in collaboration with the Salesians of Don Bosco.