Arts
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| The
hour after The
world is stripped of colour when people are killed in the war. Those
who survive war are neither alive nor dead. They are the “Shades
of Ash”. The storyline was developed after extensive research in the border areas by the scriptwriters, director and producer, who were assisted by university academics. One of the largest sets ever constructed in Sri Lankan film history - a whole village - was built on the site of an actual border village in the war zone of the North Central Province of Sri Lanka. This is also the first Sri Lankan Dolby Digital film. The cast includes renowned names such as Irangani Serasinghe, Sriyantha Mendis, Mahendra Perera, Dilhani Ekanayake, Sanath Gunathilaka, Jayalath Manorathna, Wasantha Kotuwella, Madusanka Mendis, Koshila Jayawardena, Tyron Michel, Gunadasa Madurasinghe, Kumudu Nishantha, Nilupuli Jayawardene, David Gunawardene and Dimuthu Chinthaka. Elizabeth:
So out of place at the Lionel Wendt The play everyone was there to see was Stage Light and Magic’s presentation of “Elizabeth: Almost by chance a woman” by the Italian playwright Dario Fo. This is Feroze Kamardeen’s second foray into directing this Pulitzer Prize winning political satirist. The play opened with a little scripted improvisation by Ifaz Bin Jameel who, besides being co-director, plays the role of Edgerton, the queen’s chief of Intelligence. Ifaz is a gifted comic actor with a superb sense of timing. Although this section was long enough to get the audience wondering if they were ever going to see other actors on stage, I thought he did a particularly good job of preparing the audience for a biting political satire on Sri Lankan and American politics. But that was the problem. The play never lived up to this promise. So much so that by the end of it, I failed to see what relevance the first section had to the rest of the play. A few random and vague references do not a political satire make. An overbearing and foul-mouthed queen, a few references to stupid politicians and one line on P-TOMS does not make this a political satire of any credibility. Maybe it could have been made relevant, but then the script had to be re-written. The cast had a tough job from the start. They had to take a script that by rights meant nothing to the audience they were going to perform it to, and make it relevant and funny. To complicate matters further, half the men in the play were playing female roles. Anuruddha Fernando, playing the role of Elizabeth had the toughest job of all – on stage from the beginning in a skin-cap, wig, clogs and a very heavy-looking dress, he had to speak in a high pitched voice, swear profusely and still be understood by the audience. And that last detail is where he failed – quite a few times I found myself having difficulty understanding what he was saying at all. This was also the main problem I had with Michael Holsinger’s portrayal of the gypsy-witch Madam Za-Za. The accent seemed scripted into the lines, but the lines were played with no real accent. This was very confusing as the accent seemed to come and go based upon whether it was in the script or not. But it was obvious that Michael for one was having a ball on stage. And I must say that he makes a stunning woman. Marsh Dodanwala’s brief but action-packed stint on stage as a French (?) would-be-assassin priest was quite enjoyable but looked terribly painful on the actor. But here again, the lines were lost to the accent. Actually, the lines sometimes became so unintelligible from where I was sitting, that I was left wondering if the cast was shuttling back and forth between this and the original Italian script. What kept the audience alive through this very long play was quite a lot of slapstick and a profusion of foul language. Towards the end, the foul language seemed the only thing that could still get a laugh out of the tired audience. But I for one do not go to the theatre merely to hear people swear. If that’s how you get your kicks, you need not spend your money on a theatre ticket – you could stay home and throw stones at neighbours’ windows. I feel the major shortcoming of this play was that the script was completely irrelevant to the audience in the theatre. If more attention was paid to the choice of play, this talented cast may have been able to give the audience something quite memorable to take back home. But as it stood, the production bit off more than it could chew. Dario Fo is a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright. But even good playwrights can write bad plays. I am sure that the original play in Italian had very clever lines and was a biting satire on Italian politics, but this particular translation had little of that. There is no real progression in the play. Events happen randomly, it seems just to break the monotony. And the last long section with Elizabeth seems so out of place after the preceding absurdity that the play could well have done without it. But above all this, Elizabeth is a play about a 16th century English queen, designed to satirize Italian politics originally written in Italian. Is it surprising that this was a difficult one to make interesting to a Colombo audience? -Delon Weerasinghe |
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