Lots to laugh about as Freddy returns
Freddy, the incorrigible and irrepressible, was back! This time with a blast seeing as Feroze Kamardeen, writer and director, was up to the neck with material given the alphabet soup of local politics in the past months.
Three’s company: Adin Mathitharan holds forth while Dilini Perera and Nisal Katipearachchi look on
Three stand-up comedians did what Freddy has made a name for: delivering hard-hitting if hilarious truths about Sri Lankan (and Colombo) society while also sending up local politics, last Saturday, at the Galadari Hotel.
Enlivened by ditty and song – many a baila number including those sung to the tunes of the late Sunil Perera, it was a hilarious evening when some ‘home truths’ were aired and Colombo rocked with laughter at itself but more at the antics of the country’s ‘elected few’.
The show focused on the quagmire the nation finds itself in now, and each stand-up comedian had his/ her own story into which were woven the comic absurdity of the situation; the circus of politicians paramount while commenting on society in general and in-jokes aimed at Colombo society.
Adin Mathitharan ‘from Jaffna’ had a tale to tell of a Peri-Amma who fell into a coma in 2006 in Kopai and woke up in Wellawatte this year, and of trying to explain to her the chunk of Sri Lankan political history she had missed. What follows gives us an idea of just how hilarious our political narrative of those 16 years sounds.
There are digressions or ‘sidetracks’ that stop by the GMOA and rantings about modern advertising– and with Adin doing nasal voices of dowagers, there was never a dull moment on the stage.
A section of the audience. Pix by Eshan Fernando
Nisal Katipearachchi started with his gift for voices doing some of the favourite quotes of the recent political mess and wound towards India, the big sister, looming ominously in our minds right now.
Then he like the ‘naughty little brother’ he is, started picking on Loku Akka – her habit of saying salmon with the l (and the o well rounded); use of ‘only’ at the end of every sentence and the phrase ‘too good’ (‘Salmon’ is too good?).
The real meaning of the demi-apocalyptic title Goodbye Nation became apparent when Dilini Perera – feisty, vivacious – began her stand-up about “the land of longest goodbyes”.
The claim of Sri Lankans having the longest goodbye in the world (a long drawn out ciao which begins in parties at the drawing room and is still in full swing 45 minutes later by the car door) was extended to Gotabaya (“don’t blame Gotabaya; turn off the bloody lights”): he was merely having a cheerio that had the fitting length for something as august as the presidency of the island.
Peppered in also was one of the most addictive Freddy ingredients: those catty caricatures of popular schools: S. Thomas’, Royal, Ananda; Ladies’ and Bishop’s and just to pick one, about ‘Joes’ and ‘Peterites’ complaining that while the ‘Roy-Tho’ brings back old boys from London and New York their own Big Match won’t have alumni stir from Wellawatte and Kotahena!
A fruitier joke (on a line dear to Freddy) was that it is a ‘good thing’ different schools called S. Thomas did not abbreviate their school names to Ko-Tho (Kotte Thomian) or Ma-Tho (Matara Thomian) because then a Royalist minister was sure to open a S. Thomas’ in Homagama! (Navin Dissanayake in the audience was seen to stifle a smile).
Freddy is never himself without a snooty little sniff as when Dilini quipped that various ‘Royalists’- whether they are from the school at Panadura, Horana or Reid Avenue have really little to tell them apart! Equally scorching was the observance that when Royal College calls for Grade 1 admissions the storks stop delivering babies and suddenly drop five-year-olds all over Colombo 7.
Feroze’s humour was rounded off at the end with a hopeful prayer for ‘the best with what is left’ of the country – for “otherwise”, chorused all three comedians together, “we might as well truly say, ‘Goodbye, Nation!’”
| EWC competition winners | |
The winners of the English Writers Collective’s (EWC’s) Literary Competition 2022 were announced this week.Poetry –
Sirimal Gaddiarachchi – Darkness over Paradise Isle
Ruth Kasturirathne – The Ac; Siromi Samarasinghe – Prose-
Cheka Mendis – TheFirst Crossing
The Spike Protocol Upali Mahaliyana – The Terrorist Bomb
Christine O. S. Dayananda – Magilin Hasala Perera – Face Mask Venessa Nugara –Birth Mark The winning entries in prose were all in the fiction category.
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