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He's come from Down Under
By Renuka Sadanandan
Ernest MacIntyre, a name synonymous with the English theatre revival in the ’60s and early ’70s plans to stage two of his plays in Colombo for the 50 year celebrations of the Lionel Wendt theatre.
Why write about plays to be staged in December when it's only July, you may quite logically ask. Ah, but when the plays concerned are productions by a famous name in theatre circles, albeit all of three to four decades ago, it's reason enough.

Ernest MacIntyre moved to Sydney, Australia in 1973 and what will bring him back to Colombo, cast and all for a special run is the celebration of fifty years of the Lionel Wendt theatre. It's a place that has a hold on MacIntyre for it was in that halcyon era in the sixties and early seventies that he was part of an English theatre revival that is still talked about today.

The Lionel Wendt festival which opens this month with a performance of Nrithanjali by the Chitrasena Vajira Dance Foundation will end with two of MacInytre's plays. The grand finale? "No, I wouldn't call it grand, it's just the finale," he demurs.

"A number of people want to come and pay tribute to the place that gave them so much," says MacIntyre, pointing out that he was all of 37 years when he left the island's shores. By that time, he feels, your ‘body and mind’ is set and you cannot become a foreigner, however long you may live abroad. Moreover, migration too is not what it was in the old days. "No longer does it mean a six-week long ocean voyage on a P&O liner," he laughs. “So coming and going is easy, the connections still very much there."

In the intervening years, despite a full-time career in re-insurance, a field not very familiar to Sri Lanka, as MD of Wills Faber, Sydney, he never lost touch with the stage. How did he find the time? Comes the answer pat, "If you are deeply interested in something, you'll always find the time."

At the Wendt, back in the sixties, he started off stage managing a production of Cole Porter's 'Kiss me Kate' and then went on to direct Death of a Salesman, the Caucasian Chalk Circle and as readers of an older vintage will recall, even Chitrasena in Othello, revelling in his multiple roles as actor, director and most importantly playwright.

But that was another world. At the Wendt in December, MacIntyre will present two of his own plays, He Still Comes From Jaffna and The UN Inspector is a Sri Lankan.
He Still Comes From Jaffna or The Novelist and the Terrorist was inspired by E.F.C. Ludowyck's classic He Comes From Jaffna and a piece that ran in the Island which lamented the passing of a generation reared on the Western classics and an era where the Sinhalese and Tamils were bound by a common link, the English language.

MacIntyre's play set in more modern times tells of a Colombo Tamil family and their 'intellectual' adopted daughter Maya whom they're looking to marry off to a bridegroom they have found through the Internet. Pathmanathan is a seemingly well-connected young man from Toronto, or so they think. In reality he is a terrorist, and in this complex interplay of reality and fiction, is MacIntyre's master touch.

The UN Inspector is a Sri Lankan, MacIntyre's most recent effort written especially for the Wendt is derived from Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector and inspired by the events in Iraq. It is set in the fictional Republic of Boomisthan (‘plenty of boomithel’) where a corrupt government is looking to cover up their misdeeds before the arrival of a UN inspector, travelling incognito. Boomi officials mistake a Lankan civil servant holed up in the Bhoomisthan Hilton for the weapons inspector. The man himself is unable to return home because his government is waiting to nab him over some shady deals and so does not enlighten them, using his acting ability to pull off the scam.

Both plays will be staged with a cast MacIntyre brings down from Australia, including his younger brother Gandhi and other stalwarts like Daya Gonsalkorale and Sunil de Silva, P.C, former Attorney General as well as Devika de Souza, daughter of Doric. Joining them with just a minimum of rehearsals is Iranganie Serasinghe who goes back to the old Wendt days with MacIntyre.

That was a charmed circle when thespians of the stature of the late Karan Breckenridge etc held sway. 'The best part of it was that there was this great fusion of English and Sinhala drama,' says MacIntyre recalling the likes of Dhamma Jagoda, Namel Weeramuni, Henry Jayasena all united in one dynamic flowering of artistic endeavour. "We all acted in each other's plays."

"When I applied to do my M.A in drama in New South Wales, I found I could sail through the work because of the experience I had had at the Wendt. The groundwork had already been done," he says. The added impetus was perhaps that his plays like 'The Education of Miss Asia,’ 'Rasanayagam's Last Riot' and ‘Let's Give Them Curry' have been included as texts in the Australian school and University curriculum and are also local school and University texts.

Meanwhile he's always loved to teach and regular stints at the University of Singapore have kept him coming to the region. Lecturing at Peradeniya, Colombo and Kelaniya has given him great satisfaction and during his last visit here in March he ventured to both the Batticaloa and Jaffna Universities. Despite the hardships of war, he was amazed to see drama still vibrant in the 'koothu', the traditional satire/comedy of Batticaloa.

Maybe now, hopefully as the war may not restart, the repository of knowledge and experiences among Sinhala and Tamil writers will come out in good plays, he muses. After all, works like the Caucasian Chalk Circle and Mother Courage were all produced in the aftermath of war.

What Ernest MacIntyre as he prepares for his return to the Wendt would most love to see is the theatre school revived. "It was there in the 1970s and so many like Parakrama Niriella, Ravindra Randeniya trained there. Now there's no place where an actor can learn the basic craft. Mind you it was all free, funded by the Wendt and the best people were brought in to give of their expertise." Food for thought indeed, as the curtain rises on the celebration of 50 years of the Lionel Wendt this week.

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