Futuristic

Fourteen years ago, a self proclaimed insecure 16- year-old decided to give vent to some of his feelings by writing a play titled The Day Will Come. In 2000, having revised the script he wrote as a teenager, Jehan Aloysius' book of plays- The Screaming Mind (which included The Day Will Come) was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award.

Dubbed by its author as "a futuristic, yet realistic and thought provoking allegory that deals with ageism, the abuse of elders, as well as the effects of progress and overpopulation in societies around the world," The Day Will Come goes on the boards of the Namel Malini Punchi Theatre, Borella, from June 12-15 at 7.30 pm.

Presented by CentreStage Productions and directed by Jehan Aloysius, the upcoming performance is the troupe's return to serious drama, having produced Caliban's Rebellion and Pyramus & Thisby with great success.

The production is set in the future "somewhere, sometime," where a young demented dictator passes a radical law to gas everyone over the age of 55, in order to solve the issue of overpopulation. This supreme patriarch, believing that he is "making way for the new," declares that it is a "wastage of resources keeping Elders alive when they are no longer productive." The result is a war on the Elders which leads to a group of "geriatric rebels" taking refuge in an abandoned factory.

Trapped in their underground hideaway they hope to live out the rest of their lives, though with the constant fear of the young. As other groups of Elders are captured and gassed, they realise it is a matter of time before they themselves suffer a similar fate. In desperation they seek new ways to survive and even fight back.

The Day Will Come... boasts a stellar cast of prominent English theatre personalities which includes Mohamed Adamaly, Prasad Pereira, Rajiv Ponweera, Shanaka Amarasinghe, Natalie Blacker and Wanda Godlieb, supported by Michelle Herft, Sashane Perera and Geethicke de Silva.

The duration of the play is around one hour and twenty minutes and runs without intermission," says Jehan, adding that he had to revise the script because he felt that "some of the characters had to be changed, and overall it had to be tempered; the inter-relationships between the characters had to be developed. So I added a few key changes, including the twist at the end which, for obvious reasons, I will not reveal to you now!"

And on that note, the rest is up to you, Colombo, to find out. Tickets for The Day Will Come...,are now available at the Punchi Theatre.