New take on an old tale
Ananda College triumph at the Interschool Drama Competition with a localisation of ‘Alice In Wonderland’
Ananda College emerged triumphant at this year’s Interschool Drama Competition with their homegrown play ‘Alles in Wonderland’. While local audiences have grown rather tired of the predictable localisation of well known works, the Ananda College production was something else altogether. Let’s start with the basics.
The Methodist College cast
All three finalist schools-Methodist College, Ladies College and Ananda-chose comedic plays as their bid for the much coveted Interschool Drama Competition trophy, awarded by the Interact Club of Royal College. While both the Methodist College and Ladies’ College casts produced commendably funny versions of ‘That’s Not Cricket’ and ‘He Comes from Jaffna’ respectively, it was Ananda College that dared to tread differently. Last year, the boys put on a play written by the school’s alumni-while they did not secure the trophy the play was well received by the audience. This year, they once again chose to rewrite Lewis Caroll’s timeless masterpiece ‘Alice In Wonderland’.
While it maybe fairly easy to localise western classics because the inevitable Lankan mannerisms and ‘aunty’ accents are guaranteed to draw a laugh from a willing audience, the boys took things one step further, producing a play that was the very embodiment of everything that is funny about political satire. ‘Alles’ is a star cricketer from the ‘Land of Small Miracles’ who finds himself waking up in neighbouring ‘Wonderland’ after a rather intense pub crawl. He is immediately set upon by a policeman, who takes him to the ‘Red Queen’ of Wonderland.
The Red Queen, played by the extremely talented Lithmal Jayawardhana (last year’s winner of Best Supporting Actor) is a metaphor for a face we’ve all become familiar with in recent times. The sari clad Queen demands fearful respect from all she rules, including her husband the ‘King’, an extremely small made man in a turban who has resigned himself to the will of the Queen.
The Red Queen has banned all cricketers from the Land of Small Miracles from her domain, and orders for Alles’ death. Salvation comes in the form of muscled lothario ‘None Shot One’, who replicates action moves made rather famous on the local silver screen to rescue Alles from the clutches of the evil Red Queen. What follows is a man hunt of epic proportions; several local legends make an appearance and the audience, enthralled by the daring script and ill-concealed allusions to local figures couldn’t stop laughing.
As judges Tracy Holsinger, Ruwanthie DeChickera and Thushara Hettihamu noted in their remarks, comedy is by no means easy to pull off. Yet all three schools managed commendably, relying on good cast rapport and strong scripts to entertain a young audience prone to boredom quite easily. Methodist College was up on stage first, with the very funny ‘That’s Not Cricket’, a story of a squabbling family over their recently deceased father’s cricket mementos.
The Methodist College cast had good rapport-unfortunately, a prominent tendency to over act kept them from the Gold. The start was a bit disappointing . Yet the cast rallied beautifully a few minutes into the play, drawing a reluctant laugh and by the time the end came about the entire audience were converts, laughing along to every punch line. The school was awarded runner-up, and Aisha Anver was awarded the Best Supporting Male Role and Miriam Alphonsus was awarded Best Supporting Female Role.
Ladies College, with their shortened adaptation of ‘He Comes From Jaffna’ had a stellar thespian in the form of Shalini Corea-while the young actress did not win any awards her performance as the tough and uncompromising Durai was entertaining. Chiranthi Senanayake as Cleveland was awarded the well deserved Best Lead Male Role accolade.
‘He Comes From Jaffna’, a local hit from the 70’s is the story of an overly generous man who is exposed to the harsh realities of life by his friend Durai from Jaffna, who declares that all his friends and family are opportunists because ‘I know these people, you know. They come from Jaffna!’ The overall championship, as mentioned earlier, went to Ananda College with Methodist College emerging runners up. Lithmal Jayawardhana from Ananda College was awarded the Most Memorable Performance. Kudos to the Interact Club of Royal College for pulling off a stellar evening .
Best Lead Male Role
Chiranthi Senanayake
Best Lead Female Role
Jerusha Mattews
Best Supporting Male Role
Aisha Anver
Best Supporting Female Role
Miriam Alphonsus
Shezan Rali Memorial Award for Most Memorable Performance
Lithmal Jayawardena
Backstage Award
Ladies College
Runners Up Methodist College
Champions Ananda College
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