As I entered the Valletta Campus Theatre (VCT), focused intently on finding my seat, the muted hum of commonplace things was whirring in my mind. Seat located, coat cast off, my eyes fell upon the stage as I was about to sit. The hum suddenly fell silent, arrested – my attention completely seized. Good set design is often good because it goes unnoticed, but exceptional set design is one that grips you before the play even begins.

WhatsTheirNames Theatre’s first production in Maltese is a translation of David Harrower’s contemporary classic Knives in Hens (1995), rendered in the Maltese tongue by playwright Simone Spiteri. Skieken f’Tiġieġ, showing at the VCT between April 7 and 10, was directed by Philip Leone-Ganado and featured the actors Michela Farrugia, Chris Galea and Gianni Selvaggi.

The play is earthy and raw, much like the characters that inhabit it. The backbone of the production is Spiteri’s fitting translation, purposefully imbued with Maltese Semitic grit. Set in an imaginary pre-industrial landscape in which God and nature lord it over the tongues of men, the play is centrally concerned with the power of words, specifically their capacity to liberate and expand.

Young Woman (Michela Farrugia), referred to as “mara” (woman/wife) by her husband Pony William (Chris Galea), belongs to her husband because the words that define her are his – “inti bħall kull ħaġa li rrid jien” (you are like anything I want you to be).

In between scenes, Young Woman (Michela Farrugia) is bathed in light. Photo: Jacob Sammut/WhatsTheirNames Theatre

The trees and fields and horses that surround her are out of her reach because they exist outside of the realm of her thoughts – she does not have the words to contend with them. Her life is entirely physical, whether in the fields or her marital bed.

Young Woman and William’s worlds are laid out simply and clearly in a two-tone, flat world, but that is not what audiences see. From the stalls, light and darkness animate the soil and dust of the imaginary world into poetry, Young Woman and William’s entanglement into a choreography. What we see is beauty, but that is not what the characters see – the limitation of their tongues blinding them to the full extent of their surroundings.

Farrugia’s Young Woman speaks in a slightly infantile tone, inarticulate like a child. She giggles and moves in a similar manner, only seeming to be a woman in William’s arms. Words stagger out of her mouth with difficulty. We feel the effort it takes for her to string her sentences together. In between scenes, we see her bathed in light, immersed in the search for words to match her experiences, becoming more articulate with every bout.

WhatsTheirNames Theatre has soared to new heights

Galea’s William shows a masculinity of several facets. While dutiful in his working life, he is wont to indulge in physical gratification bent on possession, but also shrinks away when his wife confuses him.

A ploughman (ħarrat) by trade, he ensures his wife adopts his same hatred of the miller (taħħan) – a figure universally detested for taking a cut of the villagers’ grain in exchange for milling it into flour. His trade also affords him the luxury of literacy, thus setting him apart from other villagers, which he despises.

Selvaggi’s miller, named Gilbert Horn, is a figure of ambiguous moral make-up, fittingly ambivalent in keeping with the superstitions surrounding him. In him, Young Woman finds emotional release and an outlet for her words.

Wielding the miller’s pen, she writes out first her own name, which she shares with him, and later her inner world. He also inserts the possibility of her husband’s infidelity into her mind, luring her into his arms.

Gianni Selvaggi’s miller (left) is a figure of ambiguous moral makeup. Photo: Elisa von Brockdorff/WhatsTheirNames Theatre

All throughout, sound and light create a feeling of both rawness and harmony, each element entwining with the actors onstage seamlessly. The beats within the soundscape are effectively paired with physical thuds from onstage, reverberating through audiences as they clutch at their seats, jaws clenched, eyes wide – the table scene exemplifying this most strikingly. Opting to be precise with the sound for this production was certainly a fruitful move.

The narrative flowed engrossingly for the large part, the spell of which was only slightly broken at the disappearance of the ploughman, later explained as the result of him leaving his wife for another woman. The slight transition between his disappearance and the explanation left me slightly scrambling, albeit momentarily. His evaporation felt somewhat unexpected, especially following the preceding scene.

Francesca Mercieca’s production design, Christopher Gatt’s lighting and Niels Plotard’s sound created a truly mesmerising stage on which three of Malta’s most talented actors brought out their best. Spiteri imbued the actors’ tongues and audiences’ minds with expansive, beautiful language and Leone-Ganado’s direction brought together an impressive and memorable play.

WhatsTheirNames Theatre has soared to new heights with this production.