Getting to the heart of what makes Colombo tick!
Oozing energy on stage: (L-r) Gehan Blok, Dino Corera, Dominic Kellar, Daminda Wijayaratne and Ifaz Bin Jameel. Pic by Indika Handuwala
Stand-up comedy within Colombo is relatively a new thing. Sure, on occasion, there have been small events for comedians to perform at but it’s certainly an untapped market. This is puzzling because you’d think living in Sri Lanka would produce enough material to sustain any comedian’s career – our social tics, the sheer absurdity of Sri Lankan politicians, the absurdity of Sri Lankan society in general: the list is endless.
Feroze Kamardeen seems to have answered everyone’s prayers by writing and directing the second instalment of his ‘Where is Freddy?’ series. Well known for his political satirical comedy Pusswedilla, the show incorporated some of his frequent collaborators – including Dominic Kellar, Gehan Blok, Dino Corera along with Daminda Wijayaratne from Identities Inc. and Ifaz Bin Jameel. I figure there’s nothing quite like standing alone onstage trying to make over 600 people laugh for half an hour but fortunately for each comedian the script played to their strengths and they delivered some wicked food for thought within their routines.
No stone was left unturned when it came to discussing Sri Lankan society. Daminda Wijayaratne, imbuing the persona of a village lad in Colombo, took aim at things like Colombo society’s relationship with Hi!Magazine, casino licences, prawn action stations at weddings, and …why DO we still put RSVP on our invitations if no one is actually going to pay attention to it? CKKKY (Call Karala Kiyapang Yakko) ftw. In turn, a very theatrical Blok commanded the stage from the get go by displaying all the hate messages he received from Anandians after making one joke about them in the first Freddy show. Like any good comedian, he just came back at them harder and took on the rest of the schools in Colombo, swearing and risque jokes aplenty.
In general, the political jokes worked the best with Corera providing some side digs at Ravi K “Selective amnesia seems to be etched into this nation’s DNA”. It was great to see the incorporation of some musical comedy as well like his ode to doctors and SAITM – the jokes within the songs weren’t as refined as the ones in the routines but it was a welcome addition. Kellar additionally took aim at Maithri and MR going further as to question what Sri Lanka would be like under a Burgher president (hint: it’d be quite a boozy time). There is something about Kellar and comedy that combines so well. Adding a brash persona and fiery energy to the routine, he doesn’t make it seem as if a comedian got onstage to do a stand-up routine – he instead embodies the process and passes it off as something natural.
Rather like Aziz Anzari whose stand-up revolves around his ethnic status, Ifaz Bin Jameel based his material on being Muslim, which involved talking about large Muslim families (affectionately called the ‘family jungle’), biriyani, the aunty network. His routine even went into suicide bombing, but immediately changed direction as he was getting into it, which I felt was a shame – it’s a touchy subject but there was more to be explored there.It’s quite rare to see any Sri Lankan Muslim talking about their experiences let alone imitating how Muslim men seduce their partners with a sort of mating call.But therein lies the magic –Kamardeen and Bin Jameel use the fact that nobody else can talk about it to their advantage to create some good material. However, because it is so rare to hear such topics onstage, I did wonder whether we were laughing purely because of the novelty of the joke rather than the joke itself. Does it matter? Not for now, I guess.
Although the pace seemed to drop ever so slightly towards the end of each set, each comedian knew how to work the crowd – there was an unbelievable amount of energy on that stage that translated well into how the audience reacted.Shaming latecomers, shout-outs to the British High Commissioner, Ifaz’s interaction with his friend Bilaal – everything was done in good spirit and a bit more of that for next time wouldn’t go amiss.
Perhaps the only thing that let the show down was its running time – a cool three hours of laughter never hurt nobody but past a certain point your mind starts to wonder about what’s open for food at this time of night (conscious of this, Kellar pointed out Commons as a good option). To solve this, the skit – which I felt was the weakest part of the show –could have been cut, as it felt very incongruent amongst the five routines. It had the potential to do so well, broaching topics such as adverts that promote fair skin over dark skin but the ideas didn’t seem fleshed out, choosing instead to skip from topic to topic.Cross dressing as a woman, Blok’s character – an OTT caricature of a horny secretary- although visibly wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, just came across more as a bit of cheap comedy. There’s only so far cross-dressing and racist caricatures will get you and no, I’m not a PC snowflake millennial – the jokes just didn’t work.
Overall, Kamardeen and his cast deftly got to the heart of what makes Colombo tick. Though the content of the jokes make it harder for anyone else who isn’t au fait with how Sri Lanka works to understand, that in itself is cool – it’s like an in-joke between a comedian and an entire audience. Perhaps for next time it would be great to see some women up there as well. But it definitely feels like we’re just getting started.