A one-hander describing the physical and emotional pathos wrought forth by (almost) every decade of your life sounds boring, right? We are all going through enough of that crap without volunteering to listen to someone else talk about it for 70 minutes, thank you very much.
And yet this is exactly what Is-Snin Li Tħoss, being staged at Spazju Kreattiv, does. And readers, it’s the very opposite of boring. In fact I may as well warn you now that you’ll be bawling your eyes out through most of Clare Agius’s standout performance.
First things first. The play is a translation of Haley McGee‘s Age Is A Feeling, widely considered the biggest break-out hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was translated to Maltese by author Clare Azzopardi, who stays true to the original script’s mellifluous language.
The script is made up of a tapestry of stories, each offering an intimate glimpse of the different stages in our lives, weaving love, sickness, travel, sex, death, friendship and more. Each anecdote is a wistful vignette showing was is and what could have been, but the overall effect is anything but disparate and the final narrative fuses together into one poignant, tear-jerking whole.
This seamlessness is actually more of a feat than you might think, considering that different members of the audience determine which stories are played out on any given night, which means that the final play is never exactly the same. Azzopardi has already excelled with adapted scripts like Tebut Isfar and Castillo, and this production would have been considerably less impressive in the hands of a lesser writer.
Romualdo Moretti’s set follows the lead of the Edinburgh original – simple, but effective, a revolving stage with a ladder bang in the centre so that the focus stays unwaveringly on the actor. The script is written in the second person, which places us bang into the narrative. We are not witnessing the protagonist’s journey through life. We are witnessing our own journey.
The production reconfirms Agius’s strengths as a theatre actor. Agius approaches the script as an organic conversation she might be having with a random stranger. The tone is conversational, and Agius’s mastery of the craft is such that even when she flubs a line – and she does that, many a time – she recovers it instantly, the effect the same as when we are chatting and we trip on our tongues. Locally, I have yet to see an actor turning their mistakes into an advantage, the audience almost feeling that this was the way it was planned.
Lighting is used simply, but effectively, highlighting Agius’s movements. Pacing doesn’t falter and even, as we are reaching the end of a lifetime, we want more. Toni Attard’s direction is spot on, playing to the strengths of the leading lady and wisely not over-orchestrating the production.
This is a story about love, loss, sadness and the fears that affect us all. These fears are the real main character as each of us is forced to face them, the audience laughing nervously at the all-too-relateable ills that come with age: the first white hair, the first white *pubic* hair, body hangups, menopause, cancer, death. And we laugh warmly at the good stuff. The uninhibited sex, the pleasures of partnership, the joy of acceptance. And we cry. We cry a lot. Which is exactly what makes this production exceptional.
Is-Snin Li Tħoss is produced by Udjenza and runs at Spazju Kreattiv today February 18 and all through the coming weekend. Tickets here. If you’d like to read other theatre reviews, check out Miscast: An Atypical Cabaret.
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