A crime that shook Malta to its core has been called to the stage in a new production by Herman Grech. They Blew Her Up is the first play written to address the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the fallout from her assassination. Lara Zammit and Joseph Agius reflect on the play and its ramifications. 

Hatred is perhaps not an instinctive and immediate emotion. Hatred simmers and occasionally takes decades to reach its boiling point, resulting possibly in the blowing up of a car and its occupant…

In Herman Grech’s theatrical production They Blew Her Up, the history and possible origin of Maltese political and social hatred is explored. One could point fingers at an irascible political leader whose words fomented the resentment towards certain strata of Maltese society; other fingers could be pointed at an intransigent Church and an opposition that piggybacked on the favourable circumstances.

However, They Blew Her Up refrains from proclaiming culprits – so many tendrils of hatred could have contributed to the sequence of events, spread over many years, that led to the callous murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Grech’s play explores the multi-pronged political, cultural and social indiscretions that essentially provided Caruana Galizia with enough fodder for her famous blog Running Commentary, aptly titled as it was a gushing source that could never run dry, that is until someone decided to close the tap by silencing her forever. 

They Blew Her Up is structured around five characters that individually investigate different viewpoints surrounding Caruana Galizia, whether sympathetic or unsympathetic, and which audiences are invited to evaluate to arrive at their own educated conclusions.

These include the character of Daphne’s son, a journalist, a police investigator and two other characters which are left deliberately mysterious as the case is still ongoing, namely the ‘criminal element’ and a ‘source’.

Charlotte Grech plays “an informer who knows the ins and outs of the story and makes some very bold statements about all that is wrong in the state of Malta”, explains Grech.

“I need to protect my sources and what happened behind the scenes, so you never know who she really is.”

Likewise, the audience is always unsure as to the identity of the criminal element, played by Alan Paris, who is clearly the most complex character in the play, if not the most compelling.

He lapses between being the potential mastermind, the middleman, a hitman or someone involved in politics, describing himself aptly as “a product of the system”. 

The intimate nature of the Spazju Kreattiv theatre, the sombre mood of the subdued lighting and the monitors encircling the stage – replaying clips over and over to jog our memories back to that fateful day of October 16, 2017 and its aftermath – provides the context.

This is a product – we created this monster, the scenario for this murder

The first actor to appear onstage, representing Caruana Galizia’s son, sensitively played by Joe Azzopardi, recited his introductory soliloquy – a heartfelt pouring of contrasting emotions and anguish. 

The outrage, the disbelief, the vulnerability, the tragic loss are all brought together in this outpouring of elemental grief and the acknowledgement that catharsis can never be achieved until the supreme perpetrators of this heinous crime are under lock and key. Maybe not even then. He recalls the memory of the wreck of the car (replicated onstage in an Andy Warhol-like pop iconic fashion), the dynamics of the whole incident and the body parts that belonged to his mother, which will forever be gory reminders, the stuff of the most outlandish nightmares.

Grech admits that the play is not just about the gruesome facts alone. “I injected some fiction into the story,” he remarks.

Recalling what spurred him to write the script, Grech describes how writing a play on the Daphne story could not be avoided. “November 29, 2019, was a long, momentous day, rife with resignations of important political personages, continuous drama, people questioned by the police and street protests. I said to myself, this is a play writing itself,” says Grech. 

As editor-in-chief of the main news organisation in Malta, Grech was actively involved in the Daphne story.

“I was writing about the circumstances of the whole sordid episode and meeting with sources. As more information accumulated, one could decipher the shady link conjoining the business and the political world,” he remarks.

Grech may easily be interpreted as being implicitly one of the characters of his own play. “I got actively involved and interviewed a number of people in the weeks subsequent to November 29; their different perspectives went into the script. In some parts of the play, I opted for a verbatim sort of theatre, where the actor is literally saying the words as they were told to me.”

More cynical audience members may approach the play with guarded dispositions, convinced it would be a series of one-sided accolades about a rather polarising figure, but those more guarded viewers will find the play surpassingly balanced.

“I don’t take sides in the story,” says Grech. “I put everyone in the spotlight, including journalists. I try to look into what could have caused this murder in as an objective manner as possible. This is a product – we created this monster, the scenario for this murder. The play also challenges us to question our own beliefs.”

The character of the journalist, played by Kim Dalli, holds some rather uncharitable views about Caruana Galizia and her journalistic practices, comparing her even to pornography, which is directly reminiscent of how some people felt about her. She brings to the light an important part of the equation, namely that Caruana Galizia is also partly responsible for the stratum of hatred present in society.

Throughout the play, she goes from being a casual observer to someone more actively involved, especially in her dealings with the source and the police inspector, played by Jes Camilleri. Her dealings with the inspector are particularly insightful, revealing to uninitiated audience members some extent of what goes on behind the scenes, before information is brought to the public eye, often forcibly. This mirrors somewhat the trajectory that many take with respect to Caruana Galizia, going from being casual consumers of her columns to seeing her in the aftermath of her murder as part of the larger drama of current Maltese society. The ramifications of her assassination cast a light on its active and nefarious underbelly, which tried, but failed, to claim her. 

“The very case of Daphne is about connections – people knowing each other, trying to hide the blatant facts. The story needed to be told without caveats – not only did they murder her but there was a very good attempt to cover up the murder,” says Grech.

The play strikes right at the core of politics in Malta, and tackles the way we are “screwed up as a society, the way we look up to politicians as though they are the be all and end all”.

“We tell our children to avoid talking about politics, but not talking about politics has brought us to this sorry state,” continues Grech, who has been prolific in writing and directing theatrical productions of a political nature for many years. 

Speaking about his process of writing the script for They Blew Her Up, Grech maintains that the fact that he is able to work with some of the best actors in Malta for this production had a huge influence on the final script. 

“My rehearsals are built into a discussion. I’m not the kind of director who just gives direction – I ask the actors to challenge me. I’ve rewritten the script twice over now, not just to bring it up to date but also because I needed to change some journalistic jargon on the actors’ advice,” explains Grech.

Sometimes fiction is more real than real life. It distils the immensity of real-world experience into something more concentrated and manageable, letting only the most significant parts into the light. The plot of They Blew Her Up, which in form and function is a work of fiction, is composed of the thoughts and conversations which many a member of the public has had about the Daphne story, meted out in such a way as to allow meaning to be gathered from it. May the discourse that surrounds this story never cease and let every word that surrounds it be at the service of the truth.

They Blew Her Up is showing at Spazju Kreattiv until March 14. On demand tickets are also available from www.kreattivita.org/en/event/they-blew-her-up/2021-02-26/